I'll Just Do It

First, I want to say thank you to the people who read the last entry and sent messages of support directly. At some point I started writing loosely, thinking "is anyone even reading this…" And still there are people who read it, and who let me know they do, and I'm grateful for that. I think it gave me a lot of comfort and strength. Maybe that's why, compared to when I wrote the last one, my state is clearly better. It might also be thanks to sleeping properly.

The weather is murderous. Even a walk at night leaves me sweating, so I haven't been going out. I've stopped exercising entirely, so when I get back to the gym soon I'll probably feel sore for the first time in a while.

Anyway, Patternflow seems to be moving along well enough. The countless uncertainties that came at me last week are slowly disappearing. Sending dozens of emails and crossing items off the checklist one by one, an outline has started to take shape. There's still uncertainty left, of course, but that can't be helped, and it seems anxiety has an expiration date too, because by now I've gotten used to it.

Running a rough quote based on what's been settled so far, I got a number where I won't make money but at least won't lose any. $199. Plenty is still unknown, of course, so it could change. It isn't final, so don't take it as such.

Factoring in the time and effort that went in, it's an enormous loss, but I think I can monetize that afterward, through other means, once the funding is done. Same as at the start. Selling the patterns I make as artworks, or through B2B installations. Or making a really distinctive version of Patternflow and selling it as a limited edition… quite a few people have contacted me saying they'd buy that, so I think there's potential.

Honestly, what I want most is for the pattern community, which has come together to some degree now, to become a kind of marketplace. People all over the world make patterns in Pattern Lab, share them, and if something's good, the people who need it can buy it. That's how you get a clear reason for people to make and share patterns. Creating just because it's fun and there are people who respond is definitely meaningful, but its sustainability is low. And if there's money to be made, I think pattern quality naturally rises too.

On my own, I'm slowly hitting a limit in pattern creation. It comes from relying heavily on AI rather than properly studying and researching algorithms as I create, and they all end up similar. Still, I don't think the direction is wrong. I feel that especially when I look at other people's patterns that have gone up recently. I've been generating patterns with AI steadily for about two months, and I see forms I've never once attempted. Clearly, just having more different people will produce a lot of genuinely new patterns.

And someday I want to draw these patterns out like a map. Then I could make the style I want more easily, and through deliberate combinations, find unintended novelties. When it gets to that level, I'll be able to go around saying Patternflow achieved something worth boasting about in the field of code graphics. Of course, I'll be going around saying it will, just like now, well before that.

Patternflow sits in a pretty interesting spot. It handles a visual language with an LED panel, and yet its positioning deliberately straddles the synthesizer, the sound side. That's partly because I was interested in sound from the start, and partly because I looked to Nam June Paik when shaping the early concept. Because of that, sound artists show a lot of interest too, on top of makers and visual artists. The rate of people contacting me directly is actually higher on that side, which is probably because the makers just started building right away.

If there were a place where people from these three areas could talk and experiment together, the potential would be limitless. That's the reason I'm building my own community, and I've added it to the site under the name Workshop. There's still far too much to improve, though, and whether it'll actually work is anyone's guess. This part, as a personal taste, I want to develop a bit like a game. I've had that goal for a while. I wanted to design and build a website that feels like Animal Crossing, a game-like place where you can chat and talk with other people. Maybe the closest form is what you see in Roblox.

That's what I want to build on my site, and later I want to make it offline too. If Patternflow ends up going really well, I imagine it'd start from Hongdae in Seoul. Well, that's just a wish. And it's for that very reason that I have to just get through what needs doing now. I get wildly anxious and impatient and then wonder why I bothered, and sometimes I slow the pace a little, but I don't stop entirely. It isn't that I don't stop, more that I can't. Which I think is a good thing.