Introducing "The Art of Research" (Patreon)

Hello good humans!

As you may know, I've been looking for a while into how to get more research back into my life, and am currently working a contract with Microsoft working with M Eifler and Jaron Lanier.

This is going really well so far! At the moment my contract extends into June but it looks like we might be able to extend it further, or that maybe I will become a full time employee? There is nothing official at this point, but I wanted to let you know we're looking into it. 

M and I are plowing ahead with our research as if things will be longer term, and as such we have set up a research website much like we did for eleVR. Documentation is part of our research process that helps us think through our work as well as provide an archive for ourselves, and we've found that making it public helps incentivize us to do it properly.

So here's our shiny new website! This is the first I've shared it outside of our research group: theartofresearch.org 

I just published a long post with a personal history of our research as well as previous groups and influences: https://theartofresearch.org/a-history/

I hope you'll find it interesting!

The site is public now so feel free to share and discuss.

I love research, and working with M and Jaron is very exciting. As you may have noticed I've been putting a lot of time and effort into this work recently. We're hoping to expand and continue come June (oh my, June is in just 6 weeks!) but we'll see.

Perhaps sometime soon we'll have to figure out how to reorganize things regarding this Patreon, if I end up having a full time real job! I do like having a non-public way to share things with just y'all, so I definitely plan to keep the Patreon (also I don't trust any job will be forever, given how weird my work is), but maybe we'll rearrange the levels or something. A conversation for another time, since I don't want to count the chickens before there are chickens.

Also that's not the point of this post... the point is to introduce The Art of Research! We are a collective using art-based techniques for technical research, and right now we are M and myself. And we are supported by Microsoft but this isn't an official Microsoft site or initiative, it is our living research document that helps us do our work.

We also have an about page here: https://theartofresearch.org/contact-us/

I love having a research website again. I still miss eleVR and our regular research post schedule. At least I've been able to channel some of that energy here to y'all :)

Ok, that's all for now. I can't tell y'all how grateful I am for getting me through the last year and getting me to the opportunity to research again... I am very excited and hopeful! :D

🐌,

Vi