About

I'm Polygon Soup.

I've been circling around code for most of my life — attracted and intimidated in equal measure. The complexity, the rigor it demands. I don't think I have a message to send. I do things because they interest me.
  

I don't like constraints but I desperately need them — they protect me from my own tendencies, which are scattered attention and lack of consistency. Bring the Noise is the first series I've actually shown. Instead of jumping between ideas as I usually do, I forced myself to explore one thing: the grid. Two nested loops — the most basic structure in code, nothing revolutionary. I filled it with patterns distributed by Perlin noise and applied simple operations: multiply by x, take the absolute value, build symmetries. And I stayed with it. I still consider myself a n00b, at the foot of the mountain — but that's also what makes it exciting.

Once the program has some depth, I launch it and I can keep hitting F5 for a stretch of time that feels out of time — because each refresh brings something new out of the same rules. It sounds obvious, but it gets me every time. There must be something powerful in that.

I go fast — instinct makes the selection. There is no undo. If I go back and look again, the one that caught my eye the first time rarely speaks to me anymore. Something else does, one I'd passed over. I can't explain that either. Trying to fix what appeared at a precise instant, under a precise set of conditions — it's urgent and illusory at the same time. The moment you try to hold it, what you perceived has already changed, like a dream the second you realize it was one. I've come to love that fleetingness, because life is in it and it can't be caught.

Launching the plotter feels like a ritual. First I clean the space — I always wipe the dust off. That's also where all the pens live, more and more of them, more and more colorful. I've never known how to draw, which I've always regretted.

There are rules to follow to give the plot every chance of succeeding — precise gestures, concentration, no room for wandering. That feels good. There are often failures too, and that can be maddening. But it keeps you humble.

And then there's the mechanical ballet of the plotter itself, always hypnotic. The path has been optimized so the head travels as little as possible — and yet I never manage to anticipate it. The plotting never goes quite as I'd imagined — fortunately. That's what makes each drawing unique, always imperfect, but each one with its own story.