Gabriele de Seta

Guest Researcher

Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies

E-mailgabriele.seta@uib.no
Visitor Address
Sydnesplassen 7

HF-bygget

5007 Bergen
Postal Address
Postboks 7805

5020 Bergen

Gabriele de Seta is, technically, a sociologist. He holds a PhD from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica in Taipei. Gabriele is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher with the ERC-funded project “Machine Vision in Everyday Life”, and was awarded the 2021 Prize for Young Researchers from the Faculty of Humanities. His research work, grounded on ethnographic engagement across multiple sites, focuses on digital media practices, sociotechnical entanglements and vernacular creativity in the Chinese-speaking world. He is also interested in experimental music, new media art, and collaborative intersections between research and creative practice.

I have designed the "Machine Vision" module for the Digital Culture BA course Critical Approaches to Technology and Society (Fall 2020), and taught the MA course Key Theories in Digital Culture (fall 2021). I regularly give guest lectures and lead workshops at international institutions. I am currently co-supervising PhD candidate Marianne Gunderson and digital culture MA student Marie Reike.

My publications are listed on Google Scholar, and most of them are accessible through links on my website.

I have recently written about deepfakes on Chinese social media platforms, the visual aesthetics of China's machine vision industry, and the sociotechnical history of the QR code.

Academic article

Show author(s) (2023). QR code: The global making of an infrastructural gateway. Global Media and China (GMAC). 362-380.
Show author(s) (2023). Machine vision situations: Tracing distributed agency. Open Research Europe.
Show author(s) (2023). Imagining machine vision: Four visual registers from the Chinese AI industry. AI & Society: The Journal of Human-Centred Systems and Machine Intelligence. 18 pages.
Show author(s) (2023). Digital Depth: A Volumetric Speculation. magazén: International Journal for Digital and Public Humanities. 245-270.

Show author(s) (2022). Representations of Machine Vision Technologies in Artworks, Games and Narratives: Documentation of a Dataset. Data in Brief.

Show author(s) (2021). Tres mentiras de la etnografía digital. Revista SOMEPSO. 110-132.
Show author(s) (2021). Sinofuturism(s). Verge: Studies in Global Asias. 74-99.
Show author(s) (2021). Scaling the scene: Experimental music in Taiwan. Cultural Studies. 162-182.
Show author(s) (2021). Introduction: ASIA.LIVE: Inaugurating livestream studies in Asia. Asiascape: Digital Asia. 5-14.
Show author(s) (2021). Huanlian, or changing faces: Deepfakes on Chinese digital media platforms. Convergence. The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.
Show author(s) (2021). Gateways, sieves and domes: On the infrastructural topology of the Chinese stack. International Journal of Communication. 2669-2692.

Show author(s) (2020). Three lies of digital ethnography. Journal of Digital Social Research (JDSR). 77-97.
Show author(s) (2020). Sociality, circulation, transaction: WeChat's infrastructural affordances . Verge: Studies in Global Asias. 65-82.
Show author(s) (2020). Private messages from the field: Confessions on digital ethnography and its discomforts. Journal of Digital Social Research (JDSR). 1-19.
Show author(s) (2020). Must Zhongzheng fall? Varied responses to memorial statues of Taiwan’s former dictator. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action. 627-641.

Lecture

Show author(s) (2023). Lies of digital ethnography.
Show author(s) (2023). Automating conspiracy: Opaque intersections of artificial intelligence and China.

Show author(s) (2022). Sociotechnical imaginaries of artifice & intelligence.
Show author(s) (2022). On infrastructural abstraction: Models, parameters, algorithms.
Show author(s) (2022). Imaginaries of artificial intelligence and machine vision in China.
Show author(s) (2022). Imagi(ni)ng machine vision: An industry walkthrough.

Academic lecture

Show author(s) (2024). Thousand-mile eyes & ten thousand images: Machine vision in Chinese everyday life.
Show author(s) (2024). Popular culture in the digital age: Qualitative methods for the study of digital folklore.
Show author(s) (2024). From ASCII greetings to synthetic livestreams: Three decades of Chinese digital folklore.
Show author(s) (2024). Beyond hallucinations & dreams: Experimental approaches to generative AI models.
Show author(s) (2024). An algorithmic folklore: Vernacular creativity in the age of everyday automation.

Show author(s) (2023). Synthetic ethnography: Field devices for the qualitative study of generative models.
Show author(s) (2023). Spiritual pollution: A decade of Chinese digital folklore.
Show author(s) (2023). QR codes: The global making of an infrastructural gateway.
Show author(s) (2023). Latent China: An experiment in synthetic ethnography.
Show author(s) (2023). From thousand-mile lenses to super VR invincible infrared X-ray glasses: A century of machine vision in Chinese science fiction.

Show author(s) (2022). “Since I can’t go to China”: A digital ethnography primer.
Show author(s) (2022). Imagining machine vision: Aesthetics of computational sensing from the Chinese AI industry.
Show author(s) (2022). From 'thousand-mile lenses' to 'super VR invincible infrared X-ray glasses': Machine vision in Chinese science fiction.
Show author(s) (2022). Deepfaking myself as a digital ethnographic method.
Show author(s) (2022). China’s machine vision vernaculars.
Show author(s) (2022). A ‘next-generation internet’: How Chinese tech companies imagine the metaverse.

Show author(s) (2021). Wisdom + ability: on Chinese discourses around artificial intelligence, algorithms, and "smart" technologies.
Show author(s) (2021). Vernacular obfuscation.
Show author(s) (2021). The circulation and governance of deepfakes in China.
Show author(s) (2021). Situating sinofuturism: Techno-orientalist fantasies, digital arms races, and chronopolitical othering.
Show author(s) (2021). Matrix barcodes, swapped faces and thousand-mile eyes: Machine vision in Chinese everyday life.
Show author(s) (2021). Machine vision in Chinese everyday life.
Show author(s) (2021). Ethnography, postdigital: Platforms, algorithms, and automation.
Show author(s) (2021). Ethnographic approaches to digital folklore.
Show author(s) (2021). Ethnographic approaches to digital folklore.
Show author(s) (2021). Apertures #5: Alexa Hagerty, Shazeda Ahmed & Vidushi Marda.
Show author(s) (2021). Apertures #2: Paola Voci & Yiyi Yin.
Show author(s) (2021). Apertures #1: Ari Larissa Heinrich & Dino Ge Zhang.

Show author(s) (2020). Situating data cultures and infrastructures: André Brock, Gabriele de Seta and Jill Walker Rettberg.
Show author(s) (2020). Gateways, sieves, and domes: On the infrastructural topology of the Chinese stack.

Editorial

Show author(s) (2023). Into the megadungeon: An introduction. magazén: International Journal for Digital and Public Humanities. 183-190.
Show author(s) (2023). China’s digital infrastructure: Networks, systems, standards. Global Media and China (GMAC).

Book review

Show author(s) (2021). Blockchain chicken farm: And other stories of tech in China’s countryside, by Xiaowei Wang (Book review). Asiascape: Digital Asia. 265-269.

Show author(s) (2020). Zoning China: Online Video, Popular Culture, and the State, by Luzhou Li. Asiascape: Digital Asia. 235-238.
Show author(s) (2020). Information fantasies: Precarious mediation in postsocialist China, by Xiao Liu. Asiascape: Digital Asia. 145-148.
Show author(s) (2020). Digital China’s informal circuits: Platforms, labour and governance, by Elaine Jing Zhao. China Information. 294-295.
Show author(s) (2020). Ambient media: Japanese atmospheres of self, by Paul Roquet (Book review). International Journal of Communication. 1753-1755.