I've been into this shape since it was discovered in 2023 after being sought after for a half a century. It's the only known chiral aperiodic monotile, named a "spectre". It is a single shape which will tile a plane infinitely but can never make a pattern. There is limited info out there about its discovery, its properties, and fun applications, but consider this a call for more research

As I’ve been studying it myself, I had the idea that a novel tile could be lucrative. For help imagining applications, I thought to myself, why should I make or buy a thousand spectre tiles when I could just train an AI model to generate images of this tiling for me in all sorts of contexts: bathroom walls, backsplashes, stained glass mosaics, clothing designs...

So I did try training an AI model. But the output was always a mess. I wonder if AI cannot be trained on the tiling because it is never a pattern. idk, but its true for now. I wonder if we would use this in a method of AI-proofing somehow

AI can generate pictures of a cat, an apple, a hexagon, or a cloud easily in any artistic style – but it can’t generate this tiling scheme, partly because this shape has never existed and partly because the tiles combine too chaotic.

The spectre can also be made curved or wavy, which then makes it incompatible with its reflection. Some variations get really crazy

It gives weird interference patterns when you layer 2 meshes of these tilings. Ya know how you'll drive by chain link fencea and you see strange patterns? The chiral aperiodic monotile is really cool like that

It may be useful for encryption or materials sciences. I also had the idea for an escape game, where you're stuck in a lobby of this shape and every door leads to the same lobby. Who knows what we'll come up with when we noodle around with this funky thing

I made a shirt, so you know any picture of me wearing it is a real picture of me, not AI, lol

As we play with this shape, there is so much opportunity for discovering new things, and opening new doors. New territory to pioneer!
<3 Z