Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 15/07/2026(Flusser voice) Into the Universe of Vaguely AI-Generated Conference Presentations 000
Reposted by Paul RoquetJustin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 10/04/2026The gap between adding a language to a model and including the community that speaks it in governance is not a technical limitation, writes Sofia Magdalena Olofsson. It is a political choice, she says. www.techpolicy.press/the-multilin...techpolicy.pressThe Multilingual AI Gap Is Not Closing. It Is Being Rebranded.The gap between adding a language to a model and including the community that speaks it in governance is a political choice, writes Sofia Magdalena Olofsson. 01013
Reposted by Paul RoquetPaul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 01/04/2026Giving a talk on my new research at @harvardusjapan.bsky.social this coming Monday at noon, in person and streaming! Zoom registration at us-japan.wcfia.harvard.edu/event/japane... 181
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 01/04/2026Giving a talk on my new research at @harvardusjapan.bsky.social this coming Monday at noon, in person and streaming! Zoom registration at us-japan.wcfia.harvard.edu/event/japane... 181
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 30/03/2026I have a brief essay on karaoke enclosures in the new Lee Bul catalogue, part of a retrospective currently on at M+ (Hong Kong) 030
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 19/03/2026Exciting this is out -- lost count of how many times I've recommended people read the original dissertation 051
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 13/02/2026Glasses promising to lower your cognitive load that depend on you being too cognitively overloaded to realize you shouldn't be wearing them 011
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 12/02/2026If you're in the neighborhood this weekend, I'll be presenting the Saturday keynote at this Harvard conference. Part of my project on Japanese CGI beyond simulation. Really just here to share the slick poster design though 060
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 09/02/2026Wednesday night at the Global Mediations Lab: Paul North (co-editor of the new edition of Capital) joins us to talk mediation in Marxcmsw.mit.eduPaul North, “Real Mediation, The ABCs of Marx’s Capital”This new translation exposes the way Capital's central element, value, gets produced and circulates through mediation between disparate processes. This talk will present the ABCs of Marx’s analysis with special focus on the role of mediation. 000
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 31/01/2026That article makes me realize I don’t really care if students can recite the plot. It’s not about enforcing one particular form of attention. I do still dream of in-person screenings, because there are some things you just can’t perceive at all without a bigger screen, or a bigger group 041
Reposted by Paul RoquetPaul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 22/01/202611am/8pm (Boston time) tomorrow! 032
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 13/01/2026Great topic (and I appreciate this long list of related vocab)networks.h-net.orgCfP Severing Ties in Japan – Zetsuen (disconnection) in Japanese Culture and Literature | H-NetDear list members,please find below the Call for Papers for a conference on phenomena and discourses of disconnection (zetsuen) in Japanese culture and literature.Best wishes,Elena Giannoulis Severing... 020
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 12/01/2026Join us for a follow-up conference to Cultural Politics of the Computational Image, this time online. Friday, January 23, day/night. Register for the zooms at: globalmediations.mit.edu/cpci-workshop/ 033
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 08/12/2025Given ambient audio capture is now mainly being used in medical contexts to record interactions with patients, it's helpful to think of Meta et al.'s 'always recording' strategy as basically turning all of life into one endless doctor's appointmentctol.digitalMeta Buys Your Conversations: Inside the Limitless Acquisition That Signals Silicon Valley's Ambient Audio BetMeta's acquisition of Limitless AI for its always-listening Pendant signals Big Tech's ambient audio strategy, raising privacy concerns despite coherent strateg 011
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 24/11/2025TIL about the tradition of satirical computer vision papers that propose using computer vision to automate the recognition of 'good' computer vision papers 0345
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 21/10/2025“In the rare cases when the bot makes a mistake, they strap on a VR headset and use joysticks to manually control grasp and place the drink back on the shelf […] In a typical eight-hour shift, they take over the robot about 50 times, and it takes up to five minutes each time to resolve the error.”restofworld.orgJapanese convenience stores are hiring robots run by workers in the PhilippinesFilipino tele-operators remotely control Japan’s convenience store robots and train AI, benefiting from an uptick in automation-related jobs. 040
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 27/08/2025Someone at Kodansha keeps inviting art animators to make VR films and it's great (newest one is a Wada Atsushi critique of mental health care in Japan/defense of imaginary cats)youtu.beVenice Immersive 2025 - If You See A CatYouTube video by BiennaleChannel 040
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 11/08/2025Tokyo Metro doing an escape room tie-in for Exit 8 is a little on the nose, but why not I guess 051
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 06/08/2025The real 2.5Dnews.mit.eduMIT tool visualizes and edits “physically impossible” objectsThe “Meschers” tool from MIT CSAIL represents “physically impossible” objects commonly found in M.C. Escher’s illustrations by converting both images and 3D models in 2.5-dimensional objects. The tool... 030
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 23/07/2025I wonder if one legacy of the VR/metaverse etc. hype cycle is companies have given up hoping people will *voluntarily* adopt new tech (excerpt from @bcmerchant.bsky.social newsletter) 021
Reposted by Paul RoquetPau Pitarch @paupitarch.bsky.social · 12/07/2025Cindi Textor's wonderful _Intersectional Incoherence: Zainichi Literature and the Ethics of Illegibility_ is available for free download. With chapters on Yi Kwangsu, Kim Saryang, Kim Sokpong, Yi Yangji, Yu Miri and others.luminosoa.orgIntersectional Incoherence | University of California PressIntersectional Incoherence stages an encounter between the critical discourse on intersectionality and texts produced by Korean subjects of the Japanese empire and their postwar descendants in Japan,... 063
Reposted by Paul RoquetPaul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 10/07/2025Building on the great papers from our Global Mediations workshop this past April, we're launching a CFP for additional contributions to an anthology on the global contestation of computational imaging. Details below; proposals due 9/13globalmediations.mit.eduCultural Politics of the Computational Image: CFP – Global Mediations Lab 043
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 10/07/2025Building on the great papers from our Global Mediations workshop this past April, we're launching a CFP for additional contributions to an anthology on the global contestation of computational imaging. Details below; proposals due 9/13globalmediations.mit.eduCultural Politics of the Computational Image: CFP – Global Mediations Lab 043
Reposted by Paul RoquetDan Hassler-Forest @danhf.bsky.social · 09/07/2025An open letter of resignation from myself and many other book series editors at Amsterdam University Press, following its recent acquisition by the notoriously exploitative academic publishing conglomerate Taylor & Francis. 27027
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 09/07/2025My sense is GPS *does* have something to do with AI, but in the sense of training people to do what a computer tells them to do rather than trust what they see in front of them. Technologies against situational awareness 030
Reposted by Paul RoquetSonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 09/07/2025This is a laundry list of rhetorical strategies to defend the adoption of a given technology for the purposes of advancing an ideology & economic regime: inevitability, unquestioning praise of “innovation,” buy-in from concerned stakeholders, assurances that partnership is not capitulation. 1/n 9481199
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 09/07/2025Finished @lizpelly.bsky.social’s fantastic MOOD MACHINE. The part on the re-muzakification of ambient really tracks with frustrations I’ve heard from musicians lately. If you only go online, it’s as if the history of ambient music has been rewritten to foreground more background-friendly styles 130
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 02/07/2025Will be circling the incomprehensible rotaries with newfound respect now that I know they can keep out self-driving cars 130
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 01/07/2025Posted about this before but this is basically Miyake Kaho’s argument about why working people stop reading novels—if you’re trained to skim for action items/takeaways then all that other novely stuff just becomes inefficient noise 280
Reposted by Paul RoquetDr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 25/06/2025We also looked at institutions & nations that are producing the most surveillance. Top inst: 1.MSFT 2.CMU 3.MIT 4.Chinese Univ of Hong Kong Top nations: 1.USA 2.China 3.UK If an institution, nation or subfield authors papers with downstream patents, most are used in surveillance patents. 6/ 29334
Reposted by Paul RoquetNature @nature.com · 26/06/2025The output of computer-vision research is overwhelmingly aimed towards monitoring humans go.nature.com/45HQI4fgo.nature.comDon’t sleepwalk from computer-vision research into surveillanceThe output of computer-vision research is overwhelmingly aimed towards monitoring humans. The potential ethical implications need more scrutiny. 05318
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 25/06/2025Creative writing assistant prof. position in our department now taking applications - fiction of any or many sorts! cmsw.mit.edu/applications...cmsw.mit.eduApplications for Assistant Professor in Creative Writing now openThe deadline for all materials is Aug 29, 2025 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. 000
Reposted by Paul RoquetJoyce Park @troutgirl.bsky.social · 16/06/2025The regime has posted signs at Manzanar, the WWII concentration camp for Japanese Americans, asking visitors to report "negative" historical interpretations. Hard to imagine a positive interpretation but it's probably just an excuse to shut down the park. www.sfgate.com/california-p...sfgate.comSigns to police 'negative' history went up at Manzanar. Historians are nervous."It sends a pretty clear message that your story is not welcome here." 751876813
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 13/06/2025Finally a Thai restaurant willing to tell customers not to use chopsticks lol 030
Reposted by Paul RoquetNCC (北米日本研究資料調整協議会) @nccjapaninfo.bsky.social · 10/06/2025NCC's Resource Sharing Committee & CEAL's Committee on Japanese Materials hosted an open meeting featuring representatives from the National Diet Library on 3/13 at AAS to discuss access to NDL materials. A summary of the discussions can now be found on our site: guides.nccjapan.org/homepage/new... 084
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 06/06/2025"As the project progressed, however, institutional pressure mounted not to engage with the topic of non-Japanese labor before 1945 [...] What began as an immersive heritage experience has become something else entirely: a study in obstruction, an index of refusal, and a methodological provocation."pastmeetspixel.substack.comWhy the Island Is SilentReframing the Prototype as a Node in a Distributed System of Refusal 020
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 05/06/2025They're calling this ambient mini refrigerator-looking thing a 'wall washer,' promising to cleanse your space with $270 worth of LEDs (why be immersed when you can be power-washed, as it were)theverge.comAmazon leaked Philips’ new Hue Play Smart Wall Washer ambient wall lightSet the mood. 010
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 29/05/2025VR to treat smartphone-induced myopia—when the only way to get you to look further away is to bring the screen right up against your face automaton-media.com/en/news/gami...automaton-media.comGaming could help restore your eyesight with this new VR game by Japanese scientists - AUTOMATON WESTThe VR game developed by Kwansei Gakuin University scientists has shown positive results so far, but further research is still needed. 020
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 22/05/2025“It really does disappoint me that so many brilliant colleagues—whose genuine breakthroughs I’ve profited from for years—would be so quick to condemn this newer, stupider way that I and others like me can make money off your life’s work, through stealing.” 081
Reposted by Paul RoquetDr. Aurélie Petit 👩🏻💻✨ @aurelievpetit.bsky.social · 25/04/2025✨🗣️ Here is the link to register for the Queer and Feminist Perspectives on Japanese Popular Cultures symposium Second Edition 💕🌈🏳️⚧️🔥 a free and online event (May 19 to 22) with 20+ participants and three awesome keynotes ✨😎 Program below and at the link here 👉 events.humanitix.com/queer-and-fe...events.humanitix.comQueer and Feminist Perspectives on Japanese Popular Cultures Symposium 2025A platform for critical discussions about gender and Japanese animation, fashion, video games, literature and digital cultures 515099
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 17/04/2025Turning back to VR for a moment, I appreciate this smart framing of Meta’s headsets—that even if you don’t see ads when you turn them on they should still be considered ad-driven devices, since that’s ultimately what’s paying for all of it (Ali Bar-Zeev interviewed by Gabriele Romagnoli) 1104
Reposted by Paul RoquetPaul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 11/04/2025Poster for my Global Mediations Lab workshop on global ramifications of the computational image, April 25 at MIT. Schedule/rsvp at globalmediations.mit.edu/cpci/ 031
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 11/04/2025Speaking of infrastructural media: Waterworks project w/site-specific ambience from Onodera Yui, ENA, Sugai Ken, and Hatakeyama Chihei 021
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 11/04/2025Poster for my Global Mediations Lab workshop on global ramifications of the computational image, April 25 at MIT. Schedule/rsvp at globalmediations.mit.edu/cpci/ 031
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 07/04/2025A new open access collection that looks interesting: The Sound of Architecture: Acoustic Atmospheres in Place (2025) library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...library.oapen.orgThe Sound of Architecture 030
Paul Roquet @inqualia.bsky.social · 05/04/2025Coming up later this afternoon, for your pleasure/discomfort #scms25 020
Reposted by Paul RoquetSonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 01/04/2025For the latest issue of Artforum I wrote about the culture of “AI” in my sector of academia, arguing that a focus on what it does distracts attention away from examining the exploitative conditions that the hopeful rhetoric of its promise upholds. www.artforum.com/features/gen...artforum.comMACHINE YEARNINGSonja Drimmer critically examines art historians’ recent embrace of generative AI as a tool for humanities research. 14412122
