Overview
What this research program is and why it exists. The frame the rest of the work hangs on.
research / vela
Vela research
A study of being human, read through four lenses — figurative-art and museum traditions, the vocabulary of emotion, literature (including the religious and contemplative inheritance), and the behavioral science of how people form, feel, and become. A magazine weaves them; adaptive intelligence learns how each reader moves through the material. Research probes desire dimensions, compositional features, temporal dynamics, and individual differences — with a deliberately rigorous bibliography, preregistered protocols, and a /study research program staged behind first-pass instrument validation.
Why this matters
The portable claim — what this research lets you understand outside the surface domain.
On its surface, Vela's research is response to the materials that have always taught us what it is to be human — figurative art, the vocabulary of emotion, literature, and the behavioral-science corpus on how people form, feel, and become. Underneath, it is an instrument: how does desire — move-toward — separate from preference (like)? How do compositional features mediate response? How stable are individual differences? The methods generalize. They speak to consumer-behavior research, aesthetic measurement methodology, taste calibration in any high-volume domain, and the design of adaptive measurement instruments well outside HR. The lenses are particular; the questions are general.
Read first
The general-audience explainer is the entry point. Everything below is the drill-down.
Public introduction (cross-thread)
General audienceGeneral-audience entry point into the Vela research program.
Read →Drill-down — full research surface
Seven-slot baseline. Forthcoming slots shown openly.
Methodology
How the work is done — instruments, protocols, the standards each report inherits.
Reports
The actual research findings — phased results, research-question briefs, applied analyses.
RQ1 — Desire vs. preference
rq-programWhat separates desire (move-toward) from preference (like) in figurative response.
RQ2 — Compositional features
rq-programWhich compositional features mediate response, and how do they interact.
RQ3 — Temporal dynamics
rq-programHow desire moves over a session and across sessions.
RQ4 — Individual differences
rq-programWhich dimensions of variance separate participants and how stable they are.
Literature review (cross-thread)
rq-programField positioning across the desire / aesthetic / measurement literature.
Desire Index — Vol. 1 analysis
rq-programFirst-volume analysis of the desire-index instrument.
Christianity, sex, and shame — literature review
christianity-sex-shameLiterature review for the Christianity / sex / shame thread.
The Christianity sex hangup
christianity-sex-shameA research note synthesizing the historical case.
Christianity — reinterpretation pattern
christianity-sex-shameHow the tradition reads itself across centuries.
Augustine across his works
christianity-sex-shameAn across-the-corpus reading of Augustine on the body, sex, and shame.
Text-aesthetic literature review
text-aestheticLiterature review for the text-aesthetic thread.
Boudoir Studios Program — research proposal
boudoir-studiosProgram proposal for the Boudoir Studios research initiative.
Boudoir Studios Program — literature review
boudoir-studiosBoudoir Studios Program — paper outlines
boudoir-studiosBoudoir Studios Program — methodology
boudoir-studiosWarhol — methods
artist-studiesMethodological notes for the Warhol artist study.
Klimt — methods
artist-studiesSchiele — methods
artist-studiesSargent — methods
artist-studiesEmotion corpus expansion (2026-04)
Notes on the emotion-corpus expansion plan.
Museum diversity of beauty — research questions
museum-diversityBootstrap of the thread. Three sub-questions: (a) museum-vs-museum corpus differences, (b) museum vs. its primary serving location, (c) temporal change using artwork creation dates. Analysis of (a) is queued at ASN-981.
Diversity of beauty across museum collections
forthcomingCross-museum comparison of how cultural and physical diversity of beauty is represented. Three sub-questions: (a) museum-vs-museum corpus differences, (b) museum vs. its primary audience location, (c) how representation has shifted over time using artwork dates. Forthcoming write-up; questions doc is the live entry above.
Audience tiers
The same headline research surfaced four ways: peer-review, engineering, general audience, product.
Public introduction (cross-thread)
General audienceGeneral-audience entry point into the Vela research program.
Christianity, sex, and shame — public introduction
christianity-sex-shameGeneral audienceChristianity, sex, and shame — academic peer review
christianity-sex-shamePeer-review framingA senior referee's review of the christianity-sex-shame literature review and supporting documents, written for a psychology-of-religion / history-of-Christianity outlet.
Christianity, sex, and shame — engineering critique
christianity-sex-shameEngineering critiqueStaff-engineer review of the corpus pipeline that produces the christianity-sex-shame research outputs — dual-grade ingestion, retrieval against thinly-curated sources, and reproducibility of the synthesis chain.
Christianity, sex, and shame — product implications
christianity-sex-shameProduct implicationsProduct strategist's read on what the christianity-sex-shame research tells Vela to build next — content-warning UX, member recruitment messaging, the theological-coherence intervention as a /study module, and how the player should adapt for high-religiosity participants.
Text-aesthetic — public introduction
text-aestheticGeneral audienceEngineering critique
Engineering critiqueArchitecture and instrument design from an engineering reviewer's lens.
Product implications
Product implicationsWhat the research tells us to build next.
Peer-review framing
Peer-review framing · forthcomingHeadline findings positioned for academic peer review.
Bibliography
Field positioning — formal references and literature maps grounding the research threads.
Literature map (cross-thread)
Map of the field across the major Vela research threads.
Bibliography — BibTeX (cross-thread)
Master bibliography in BibTeX form.
Christianity, sex, and shame — literature map
christianity-sex-shameChristianity, sex, and shame — BibTeX
christianity-sex-shameText-aesthetic literature map
text-aestheticText-aesthetic BibTeX
text-aestheticMuseum diversity-of-beauty — literature map
forthcomingForthcoming — field positioning for the diversity-of-beauty thread.
Preregistrations & protocols
Studies and intervention protocols filed before execution.
Pipeline
What is running, what is queued, what is forthcoming.
Thesis readiness
Where the research program sits relative to thesis-grade readiness.
Proposed studies
Studies queued for design and execution.
Downstream research strategy (2026-04-24)
How the research program connects to recruitment and publication.
Pipeline status
Hand-curated snapshot of running / queued / blocked / recently completed / coming soon across the Vela research program.