Presentations

Featured

Hyperscalar Geographies

Digital Geographies Conference, University of Lisbon · Lisbon, Portugal · November 3–5, 2025

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly driven by scaling laws—the principle that greater accumulation of data, computational power, and infrastructure generates exponential improvements in performance. Hyperscalers—dominant cloud service providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Tencent, Huawei, and Alibaba—supply the computational infrastructure that powers AI and other data-intensive industries. This dominance extends beyond technical infrastructure, reshaping the political economy of global capitalism by reinforcing dependencies among firms, states, and markets and prompting pressing questions regarding sovereignty, governance, and territorial control, especially in the context of growing geopolitical tension and the unfolding polycrisis.

Feature Extraction: The Aesthetics and Politics of Algorithms

NAVEL Assemblies · Los Angeles, CA · March–May 2020

Feature Extraction is a 3 month long series of workshops and discussion groups that will bring together artists and researchers engaged with machine-learning. Under the banner of “artificial intelligence,” machine learning has become central to interlocking domains of political-economic control, including: predictive policing, financialization, ad-tech, social media, and logistics. Unlike the proprietary algorithms used in these applications, artistic uses of machine learning allow people to experience and engage with algorithms directly. In this series, we pair artistic uses of machine learning with scholarly research to explore the social repercussions of algorithmic governance under algorithmic capitalism. No technical expertise required.

Slides

Conference presentations

Digital Methods for Digital Geographies
Workshop on New Methodologies in Financial Geography: Tracing Corporate Power and Flows, Smith School of Business · Toronto, Canada · July 13–14, 2026
Hyperscalar Geographies
Digital Geographies Conference, University of Lisbon · Lisbon, Portugal · November 3–5, 2025
Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly driven by scaling laws—the principle that greater accumulation of data, computational power, and infrastructure generates exponential improvements in performance. Hyperscalers—dominant cloud service providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Tencent, Huawei, and Alibaba—supply the computational infrastructure that powers AI and other data-intensive industries. This dominance extends beyond technical infrastructure, reshaping the political economy of global capitalism by reinforcing dependencies among firms, states, and markets and prompting pressing questions regarding sovereignty, governance, and territorial control, especially in the context of growing geopolitical tension and the unfolding polycrisis.
On Development Software, Sovereignty, and the Financial Modernization of Singapore (1980–1990)
FinGeo Global Conference, National University of Singapore · Singapore · February 26–28, 2025
Financial Cloud Sovereignty
FinGeo Global Conference, National University of Singapore · Singapore · February 26–28, 2025
Co-organized panel.
Reading the Language of Large Language Models
The AI Paradigm: Between Personhood and Power, UC Irvine · Irvine, CA · May 23–24, 2024
Co-presented.
Colonial Circuits
4S Annual Meeting · Honolulu, HI · November 8–9, 2023
Co-organized panel on Digital Capitalism and Imperialism.
Market Technology Policy: The Role of SESDAQ in Singapore's Plans for Development
Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) · Long Beach, CA · 2023
The Stock Market of Tomorrow: NASDAQ and the Colonial Circuits of Finance
Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference · London, UK · August 29, 2023
From Hammer to Infrastructure: Tracing 'Breakdown' in Amazon's Vectors of Power
4S Conference · Toronto, Canada · October 9, 2021
ANNA: Market Metadata and the Uneven Infrastructures of Financial Assetization
4S Conference, Panel on Markets as Data · Toronto, Canada · October 6, 2021
Spatial Semiotics: Toward an Economic Geography of Information
American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting · April 7, 2021
Personalizing Persuasion Architecture: Privacy Harms and Algorithmic News Media
International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) · Stanford, CA · June 25, 2018

Invited talks & workshops

Context of 'Context'
AI Infrastructures Workshop: Infrastructures, Ecologies, Ruins · May 28–29, 2026
Organized by Ludovico Rella, Benedetta Catanzariti, and Louise Amoore.
Digital Memory Dialogues II: Finding a 'North Star' for Using AI in Holocaust Memory
University of Sussex · Online · February 12, 2026
Live online discussion.
Seeing Like a Cloud
Department of Geography's Data Center Workshop, Beijing Normal University · Beijing, China · November 19, 2025
Platform Finance
Cosmopolis Lunch Seminar · Brussels, Belgium · March 3, 2025
From NASDAQ to SESDAQ: Development and the Creation of the Second Board Stock Exchange in Singapore (1981–1989)
Lee Kong Chian Research Fellows Public Presentation, National Library of Singapore · Singapore · June 17, 2023
Advanced Googling It: Digital Methods for Online Research
UCLA Department of Information Studies · Los Angeles, CA · November 4, 2022 · Slides
Grad STRIVE Fellowship Panel
Grad STRIVE 2.0 Program, UCLA · Los Angeles, CA · November 2, 2022
BYO Text: Introduction to Text Generation with Large Language Models
UCLA Department of Information Studies · Los Angeles, CA · February 6, 2022
Data Activism Workshop
California Rare Books School, UCLA · Los Angeles, CA · August 16, 2021
Feature Extraction: The Aesthetics and Politics of Algorithms
NAVEL Assemblies · Los Angeles, CA · March–May 2020 · Slides
Feature Extraction is a 3 month long series of workshops and discussion groups that will bring together artists and researchers engaged with machine-learning. Under the banner of “artificial intelligence,” machine learning has become central to interlocking domains of political-economic control, including: predictive policing, financialization, ad-tech, social media, and logistics. Unlike the proprietary algorithms used in these applications, artistic uses of machine learning allow people to experience and engage with algorithms directly. In this series, we pair artistic uses of machine learning with scholarly research to explore the social repercussions of algorithmic governance under algorithmic capitalism. No technical expertise required.
Feature Extraction
Experimental Digital Arts, UCLA · Los Angeles, CA · November 16–17, 2019
A series of talks and workshops centered around machine learning, abstraction, and algorithmic subjectivity.