EleVR

Just going to plug one of my favorite blogs here: http://elevr.com/ They're experimenting with basic VR interaction design. How do you represent things in VR, how do you communicate with other people in the room when you're wearing a headset, how does physical context change your experience. Fascinating, basic stuff we're going to have to figure out before we can build meaningful experiences in VR. http://elevr.com/would-you-like-to-see-an-invisible-sculpture/

>when Evelyn shared a document about critique in art and how we could apply those techniques for CDG’s research. Up until then, I was thinking of the connection between art and research as something fuzzy and cultural, as if artists just happen to be good researchers due to some instinct for creativity, or that art gives us life and soul that helps to motivate interesting ideas. I don't classify myself as an artist but the cited document is wonderful! Vi Hart if you're out there somewhere, thank you for writing this! I've been a big fan of your work for a while and this was a delight to read. [1] http://elevr.com/portfolio/art-based-research/ [bonus] http://elevr.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/CritatCDG.pdf

http://elevr.com/portfolio/hyperbolic-vr/ Another interactive exploration of the hyperbolic plane. This one is less a game than a interactive visualization buy still cool.

> Unfortunately, a combination of forces in the world make nonprofit long-term research a tough sell right now. It doesn’t matter how good we are at what we do. Everyone is overextended trying to solve all the world’s problems at once, and we’re in the unpopular space of being neither for-profit nor directly and immediately philanthropic. http://elevr.com/elevr-leaving-ycr/

It is my understanding that HARC has stopped funding Victor’s [1] and Hart’s [2] research. Is that accurate? Have other groups in the list suffered from the same fate? If so, how does that fit within HARC’s long term research strategy? These sort of initiatives rarely bear fruits in a single year. [1] http://elevr.com/elevr-leaving-ycr/ [2] I was at Dynamic Land earlier this week, and they said they were closing down for the winter, actively looking for funding, and not reopening if they cannot provide said funding.

Ok I found what I was talking about: http://elevr.com/portfolio/future-programming-interfaces/

>We're not a startup and not looking to reach a broad audience, get investors, or create a product. We even wrote a thing a while back regarding our not being a startup, because it is an unfamiliar concept to many people: http://elevr.com/were-not-a-startup/ Huge respect for the work you guys have done, but I think this is an unfortunate mindset. The real magic sauce for American capitalism that has driven us to such heights of technological achievement has always been about the synthesis of lofty, idealistic goals combined with the desire to make lots and lots of money. I don't think those two things should be separated as an either/or. There is certainly a need for pure basic research funded by private industry. But the real goal should be figuring out how we can do that in a way that is economically sustainable both short and long term.

yes, vihart has been working on it for a while: http://elevr.com/elevrant-camera-circles-for-stereo-spherical-video/

Vi Hart here... someone sent me this with confusion that it was at the top of HN yet all the comments are completely irrelevant. My understanding is that HN and YC are usually about startuppy stuff and business models and investors and etc, so I guess it makes sense that everyone's in that mindset. We're not a startup and not looking to reach a broad audience, get investors, or create a product. We even wrote a thing a while back regarding our not being a startup, because it is an unfamiliar concept to many people: http://elevr.com/were-not-a-startup/ The HARC group at Y Combinator Research has/had an ambitious vision of bringing back the basic research model that led to many fundamental innovations in the 60s, including a handful of groups in addition to ours. The kind of research that creates enormous value that cannot be captured by individual investors or companies, but that lifts the industry/people as a whole. I think if world events had been different, the timing would have worked out well for a resurgence of this kind of research. Ok nice chat, HN. You're a weird place. Vi

Does anyone know what happened to HARC ? It was announced in May 2016, with Alan Kay's involvement and Bret Victor's: http://blog.ycombinator.com/harc/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11679680 In September "eleVR" said it was leaving YC research: http://elevr.com/elevr-leaving-ycr/ I presume these e-mail excerpts are inspired by the end of HARC too? What happened? In the thread about first year reports a couple months ago, someone suspects that funding has ended too. Also, Bret Victor's work and name are conspicuously missing from the first year reports. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15564072 https://harc.ycr.org/reports/