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Fabian Offert

@zentralwerkstatt.org
3.1K followers 1.1K following 143 posts

Associate Professor UC Santa Barbara | I study how machine learning models represent culture and what is at stake – aesthetically and politically – when they do.

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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 10/10/2026
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 08/10/2026
Tomorrow and Saturday at @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social, free and open to all. Stop by if you're in the area!
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 07/10/2026
.VSB?!?!?! This is early 2000s script kiddie erasure and I feel personally attacked.
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 29/09/2026
I'll be at the amazing U of T BMO lab at 4:30pm tomorrow to talk about Brecht, Wagner, and artificial intelligence, courtesy of @sbaycheng.bsky.social & David Rokeby. New research, so I'm especially excited. Stop by if you happen to be in Toronto!
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 24/09/2026
The program for our Critical AI Studies? conference, happening Oct. 9&10 at @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social, is now online: huml.ucsb.edu/conference. Hope to see you there!
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 28/08/2026
Ja danke wie immer sehr hilfreich
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 25/08/2026
Lässt sie sich nicht. Im Bild YOLO 8.
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 25/08/2026
Alle Jahre wieder. It. Does. Not. Work. Und übrigens auch 1:1 von Adam Harvey geklaut. (Das Argument, es ginge nur darum, auf die Überwachung aufmerksam zu machen, ist irrelevant wenn – wie in der taz hier – die Funktion als Fakt präsentiert wird. Im Bild: YOLO 8 one shot.)
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 20/08/2026
Na ja bis auf
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 26/06/2026
Some good news (if you like me)
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 23/06/2026
Excited to share that we are now inviting proposals for our upcoming Critical AI Studies? conference at @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social on Oct. 9&10, 2026. Please see the full CfP here: huml.ucsb.edu/conference. Submissions are due July 31, 2026. For questions DM me or @owenleonard.bsky.social.
Poster for the conference "Critical Artificial Intelligence Studies?" at the University of California, Santa Barbara, October 9&10, 2026. The subtitle says "An interdisciplinary conference on a field in formation."
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 12/05/2026
This neat site assembles all kinds of ancient OSs (more like window managers) which reminded me of the hyper-obscure one that I learned Desktop computing on, called GeoWorks Ensemble. It pretends to be Windows but if you poke anything it crumbles back into DOS. Glorious. www.typewritten.org/Media/
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 25/02/2025
Nobody knows this but if you press one of these for more than 30 seconds a genie will appear and fail to interpret a topic model for you!
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 22/01/2025
If you're in the SBA area, join @ritaraley.bsky.social and myself this Friday, 3-5 for the opening of our newly established Center for the Humanities and Machine Learning, feat. a keynote by @hannesbajohr.de! huml.ucsb.edu
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 02/01/2025
As part of a fabulous special issue of @jdsr.bsky.social, the full version of @thaophan.bsky.social's and my paper "A sign that spells: Machinic concepts and the racial politics of generative AI" is finally out. Check it out below: publicera.kb.se/jdsr/issue/v.... In the paper 1/3
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 10/12/2024
Since the 2024 Nobel Prize was given to AlphaFold we have added some major updates to our paper on protein folding. Check out the new version below where we trace the language paradigm in biology and argue that transformers carve out unique epistemological territory. arxiv.org/abs/2405.09788
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 09/12/2024
I'll make anything that needs its own little gadget pan but this time it was definitely worth it.
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 02/12/2024
What is the method of critical AI studies, if there is one? @ranjodhdhaliwal.com and I have some thoughts on this that you can now read here: arxiv.org/abs/2411.18833.
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 19/11/2024
It's been a while but finally this fantastic book is out in the world, and it's open access: unlearn.gestaltung.ai. If you like, check out my slightly provocative contribution "Five Theses on the End of AI Art" here: unlearn.gestaltung.ai/article/pj83...
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 17/11/2024
That should do it
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 17/11/2024
Enjoying some diffusion limited aggregation while I'm out here
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 16/11/2024
Ah much better
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 23/09/2024
Anwärter für die Fußnote des Jahres
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 06/05/2024
Kinderbetreuung am Limit (BER arrivals)
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 24/02/2024
Best paper title of the year award goes to arxiv.org/abs/2311.17137
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 08/02/2024
My terminally SoCal 9yo asked me to look something up in the "Oxnard English Dictionary" I'm dead
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 09/01/2024
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 19/12/2023
Update
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 19/12/2023
I mean who needs heroin
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 14/12/2023
New poststructural anthropology just dropped (from sliders.baulab.info/)...
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 07/11/2023
When the DH conference invites nobody working on images
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 02/11/2023
Well, so much for the "endless possibilities" opened up by generative image models. DALL-E 3 (via ChatGPT) now tries to talk you out of anything too speculative (on top of all the hard-coded restrictions). With lots of reassurance it finally provided but boy, what a stupid way to make boring images.
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 03/10/2023
If you're at the GSA conference in Montréal this week, stop by some of the events organized by the DH network: panels on Literature, Translation, Methods (10/6@3.45p) and Theory and Methodology (10/7@3.45p) & round table on teaching (10/7@10.15a). Reception on 10/7@6p. Or just HMU in the halls!
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 01/10/2023
TFW you pre-order the Mad Max meets Blade Runner version of an F-150 Raptor and get a Prius that identifies as a fridge.
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 29/09/2023
Just back from an amazing Dagstuhl seminar on "Visualization and the Humanities". Astonishing how productive academic work can feel if you ignore your emails for a week. Also, we need more actual retreats like this (somewhere nice and remote, not your campus' multipurpose room) in the Humanities!
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 04/09/2023
Dead now but worth it
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 21/08/2023
With so many people from the academic corners of Twitter joining it feels more and more post-apocalyptic on here. "Oh look honey, the Millers also survived!"
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Fabian Offert @zentralwerkstatt.org · 16/08/2023
Heatmap of the most "Paris" parts of Paris; the most "Los Angeles" part of Paris via leoimpett.github.io/clip-map 4/5
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