Good, But

The funding goal is met. It had stalled at 75% for a few days, which was eating at me, and when I checked this morning it had jumped to 130%. Wondering who had bought that many, I checked, and it was the wholesale volume Crowd Supply purchased. I knew they buy in proportion to individual orders, but I'd assumed it would be added after the funding ended. It isn't a bad thing. No, it's a good thing. Either way the funding goal is met, so one thing weighing on me is gone.

My pride is a little bruised, though. I'd wanted to hit the goal naturally, by advertising properly or something, and it feels like I used a loophole. The feelings and fatigue that piled up each time a backer appeared and then it stalled again must have turned into some petty stubbornness. Without that I could have been purely happy about it, no lingering unease, but I'm greedy that way. It was like this before, too, when I placed in a small media art competition. My friends were delighted, while I felt disappointed and, for some reason, aggrieved.

Anyway, the funding is off my shoulders, and something good happened too. Patternflow is going to be sold as an artwork rather than a product. An offer came in to open a short-term pop-up gallery called USER EXPERIENCE in San Francisco in October and exhibit Patternflow there. Exhibiting means shipping it over, and round trip alone runs about $150, so I said I'd also sell it as a limited edition while I was at it. I proposed $500 cautiously, so as not to be too burdensome, and they accepted right away, so I'll be sending it soon. It's effectively the first in the artist edition series. I'm going to sign the model I liked most, the one I'd been using for Instagram shoots, and send it with a certificate. Hyunji, who's done this before, helped me out.

I think the museum newly opening in Istanbul would have signed immediately if I'd proposed at around this price. Which is to say $500 reflects a heavily discounted version of the value I've held for Patternflow as an artwork. I feel the loss of that, but I need funds right now to build spare units for advertising and loaning, so it's perfectly suited to that.

I've also been thinking harder about advertising. The funding goal is already met, and the net profit from selling more isn't all that meaningful. There's no longer a reason to advertise the funding. Selling one unit brings in roughly 80,000 won. Assuming I run about two weeks of meaningful advertising on September's 3.5 million won grant, I'd have to convince around 50 people to receive that money by late October or November… and a shift of that size wouldn't make a meaningful difference to developing Patternflow going forward. I'm going to go toward open source and the artist side anyway, in line with the original intent, so it also feels better to put the grant straight there without the delay. Whatever~

Instagram has been pretty meh lately. I posted some slick patterns made with the recently released GPT Astra and the response was below expectations. I'm tired of making new patterns, and linking them with sound is too hard. Discord has basically died and I should revive it but I can't be bothered. The Astra model really is remarkable, though. Later I want to have it do pixel art, placing pixels one by one.

There was something, something… it felt like there was a whole lot to write, and once I started writing I forgot it. I have to write the Crowd Supply update post too and I can't be bothered. Suddenly everything just feels like too much.