Emma Fraser
Biographic Data
| ID | 244132 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Emma Fraser |
| GIVEN NAMES | Emma |
| FAMILY NAME | Fraser |
| SIGNATURE | FRASER E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2706-2055 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 52 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Expanding the city digital twin in the context of crisis, cartography and computation
This commentary responds to Gillian Rose's ‘Visualising human life in volumetric cities: city digital twins and other disasters’ as a framework for thinking about crisis and visual cultures in digital twinning practices. It frames Rose's analysis as a specific intervention into the visual and cultural relationship between filmic depictions of disaster and catastrophe replicated through white and masculinist imaginaries of the ordered rational cit…
Digital Twin or Digital Kin: Misunderstandings and Myths about Urban Simulation, and Directions for Change
Using three case studies from the United States and Australia, this article explores the conditions required to make urban digital twin projects successful, considering a traditional urban digital twins (UDT) project and National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded 3D gaming digital twins in New York and a large-scale federated UDT platform in New South Wales (NSW) Australia. The authors argue that questions around interoperability and profit and ten…
From the urban factory to the metaverse: Understanding datafication, spatial computing and digital twinning practices
This article considers digital twins and digital twinning practices in relation to the spaces of the factory, city, and the “metaverse.” We draw on the work of urban and new media theorists to argue that digital twins are part of a long history of urban media and computation. Expanding on Walter Benjamin’s notion of phantasmagoria, we argue that the logics of the factory inherent in early digital twins are intensified and expanded in the more rec…
Speculative geographies: Fictions and futures
Speculative thinking has made its mark in several disciplines and literary genres, including continental philosophy, predictive analytics, and science (or speculative) fiction. What might speculation look like through a geographical lens? And how would such thinking in a distinctly geographical register build on and possibly place into a wider context work on utopias, alternative communities, game worldscapes, and speculative futures? This conver…
The future of digital space: Gaming, virtual reality, and metaversal thinking
The accelerated post-Covid expansion of online worlds presents an unprecedented move of people into real-time interactive digital spaces. What does this change mean for the future of geography as a discipline? At this critical juncture, there is potential to rethink the position of the digital in geographical thought and praxis – to move beyond apparently common-sense categorizations of real and virtual, representation and reality. This commentar…
Moving towards a critical perspective on automation: Theories of technology, labour, and capitalism
This commentary considers the complex theoretical discussion in dispositions towards automation, and considers future dialogues and directions the authors might take up. Specifically, the commentary engages with notions of labour, enchantment, and automation, and makes the case for further explorations of these conceptual domains
Ruins of the smart city: A visual intervention
The visual imaginary of the future city is increasingly dichotomized between visions of hyper-technological digital urbanism and the city in a state of ruin, without people, overtaken by nature. These alternating imaginaries key into concerns over urban futures, as questions of sustainability and rising inequality come to bear on urban life. Such binary imaginaries produce volumes of visual material, lauding and critiquing philosophies of newness…
"Smart" Discourses, the Limits of Representation, and New Regimes of Spatial Data
As "smart" urbanism becomes more influential, spaces and places are increasingly represented through numeric and categorical data that have been gathered by sensors, devices, and people. Such systems purportedly provide access to always visible, measurable, and knowable spaces, facilitating ever more rational management and planning. Smart city spaces are thus governed through the algorithmic administration and categorization of difference and st…
Is computer gaming a craft? Prehension, practice, and puzzle-solving in gaming labour
This article applies sociological theories of ‘craft’ to computer gaming practices to conceptualise the relationship between play, games, and labour. Using the example of the game Dota 2, as both a competitive esport title and a complex game based around a shared practice, this article examines the conditions under which the play of a computer game can be considered a ‘craft’. In particular, through the concept of ‘prehension’, we dissect the gam…
Unbecoming place: Urban imaginaries in transition in Detroit
The population of Detroit has been steadily declining since the 1950s, but the imaginaries that shape the city are in constant transformation, changing with each successive government or regeneration initiative. Since 2010, downtown Detroit has been targeted by blight removal projects, real-estate speculation and redevelopment plans. These growth-oriented imaginaries shape the ways in which place is perceived and encountered - materially and conc…
I am he. I am he. Siri rules’: Work and play with the Apple Watch
In this article, we will use autoethnographic accounts of our use of the Apple Watch to analyse a new type of ludic labour that has emerged in recent years, in which leisure activities are redefined in terms of work and quantifiable data. Wearable devices like the Apple Watch encourage us to share data about ourselves and our activities, dividing our attention in everyday contexts as ‘quasi-objects’ that need our input to hybridise work and play,…
At the Stage of Their Fate: Salvaging the Urban Obsolete in Sydney
Chronicling the interiors and exteriors of selected abandoned buildings in Sydney, this article examines the problem of memory in spaces that are not only isolated and devalued, but often have played no role in the life of the casual visitor or observer. How can the ruins of someone else’s past be made to speak, and how might contemporary ruinscapes reveal a different way of engaging with the past in urban space, particularly in one of the “young…
Unbecoming place: Urban imaginaries in transition in Detroit
The population of Detroit has been steadily declining since the 1950s, but the imaginaries that shape the city are in constant transformation, changing with each successive government or regeneration initiative. Since 2010, downtown Detroit has been targeted by blight removal projects, real-estate speculation and redevelopment plans. These growth-oriented imaginaries shape the ways in which place is perceived and encountered - materially and conc…
"Smart" Discourses, the Limits of Representation, and New Regimes of Spatial Data
As "smart" urbanism becomes more influential, spaces and places are increasingly represented through numeric and categorical data that have been gathered by sensors, devices, and people. Such systems purportedly provide access to always visible, measurable, and knowable spaces, facilitating ever more rational management and planning. Smart city spaces are thus governed through the algorithmic administration and categorization of difference and st…
I am he. I am he. Siri rules’: Work and play with the Apple Watch
In this article, we will use autoethnographic accounts of our use of the Apple Watch to analyse a new type of ludic labour that has emerged in recent years, in which leisure activities are redefined in terms of work and quantifiable data. Wearable devices like the Apple Watch encourage us to share data about ourselves and our activities, dividing our attention in everyday contexts as ‘quasi-objects’ that need our input to hybridise work and play,…
Speculative geographies: Fictions and futures
Speculative thinking has made its mark in several disciplines and literary genres, including continental philosophy, predictive analytics, and science (or speculative) fiction. What might speculation look like through a geographical lens? And how would such thinking in a distinctly geographical register build on and possibly place into a wider context work on utopias, alternative communities, game worldscapes, and speculative futures? This conver…
Ruins of the smart city: A visual intervention
The visual imaginary of the future city is increasingly dichotomized between visions of hyper-technological digital urbanism and the city in a state of ruin, without people, overtaken by nature. These alternating imaginaries key into concerns over urban futures, as questions of sustainability and rising inequality come to bear on urban life. Such binary imaginaries produce volumes of visual material, lauding and critiquing philosophies of newness…
The future of digital space: Gaming, virtual reality, and metaversal thinking
The accelerated post-Covid expansion of online worlds presents an unprecedented move of people into real-time interactive digital spaces. What does this change mean for the future of geography as a discipline? At this critical juncture, there is potential to rethink the position of the digital in geographical thought and praxis – to move beyond apparently common-sense categorizations of real and virtual, representation and reality. This commentar…
Digital Twin or Digital Kin: Misunderstandings and Myths about Urban Simulation, and Directions for Change
Using three case studies from the United States and Australia, this article explores the conditions required to make urban digital twin projects successful, considering a traditional urban digital twins (UDT) project and National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded 3D gaming digital twins in New York and a large-scale federated UDT platform in New South Wales (NSW) Australia. The authors argue that questions around interoperability and profit and ten…
From the urban factory to the metaverse: Understanding datafication, spatial computing and digital twinning practices
This article considers digital twins and digital twinning practices in relation to the spaces of the factory, city, and the “metaverse.” We draw on the work of urban and new media theorists to argue that digital twins are part of a long history of urban media and computation. Expanding on Walter Benjamin’s notion of phantasmagoria, we argue that the logics of the factory inherent in early digital twins are intensified and expanded in the more rec…
At the Stage of Their Fate: Salvaging the Urban Obsolete in Sydney
Chronicling the interiors and exteriors of selected abandoned buildings in Sydney, this article examines the problem of memory in spaces that are not only isolated and devalued, but often have played no role in the life of the casual visitor or observer. How can the ruins of someone else’s past be made to speak, and how might contemporary ruinscapes reveal a different way of engaging with the past in urban space, particularly in one of the “young…
I am he. I am he. Siri rules’: Work and play with the Apple Watch
In this article, we will use autoethnographic accounts of our use of the Apple Watch to analyse a new type of ludic labour that has emerged in recent years, in which leisure activities are redefined in terms of work and quantifiable data. Wearable devices like the Apple Watch encourage us to share data about ourselves and our activities, dividing our attention in everyday contexts as ‘quasi-objects’ that need our input to hybridise work and play,…
Is computer gaming a craft? Prehension, practice, and puzzle-solving in gaming labour
This article applies sociological theories of ‘craft’ to computer gaming practices to conceptualise the relationship between play, games, and labour. Using the example of the game Dota 2, as both a competitive esport title and a complex game based around a shared practice, this article examines the conditions under which the play of a computer game can be considered a ‘craft’. In particular, through the concept of ‘prehension’, we dissect the gam…
Unbecoming place: Urban imaginaries in transition in Detroit
The population of Detroit has been steadily declining since the 1950s, but the imaginaries that shape the city are in constant transformation, changing with each successive government or regeneration initiative. Since 2010, downtown Detroit has been targeted by blight removal projects, real-estate speculation and redevelopment plans. These growth-oriented imaginaries shape the ways in which place is perceived and encountered - materially and conc…
Ruins of the smart city: A visual intervention
The visual imaginary of the future city is increasingly dichotomized between visions of hyper-technological digital urbanism and the city in a state of ruin, without people, overtaken by nature. These alternating imaginaries key into concerns over urban futures, as questions of sustainability and rising inequality come to bear on urban life. Such binary imaginaries produce volumes of visual material, lauding and critiquing philosophies of newness…
"Smart" Discourses, the Limits of Representation, and New Regimes of Spatial Data
As "smart" urbanism becomes more influential, spaces and places are increasingly represented through numeric and categorical data that have been gathered by sensors, devices, and people. Such systems purportedly provide access to always visible, measurable, and knowable spaces, facilitating ever more rational management and planning. Smart city spaces are thus governed through the algorithmic administration and categorization of difference and st…
The future of digital space: Gaming, virtual reality, and metaversal thinking
The accelerated post-Covid expansion of online worlds presents an unprecedented move of people into real-time interactive digital spaces. What does this change mean for the future of geography as a discipline? At this critical juncture, there is potential to rethink the position of the digital in geographical thought and praxis – to move beyond apparently common-sense categorizations of real and virtual, representation and reality. This commentar…
Moving towards a critical perspective on automation: Theories of technology, labour, and capitalism
This commentary considers the complex theoretical discussion in dispositions towards automation, and considers future dialogues and directions the authors might take up. Specifically, the commentary engages with notions of labour, enchantment, and automation, and makes the case for further explorations of these conceptual domains
Speculative geographies: Fictions and futures
Speculative thinking has made its mark in several disciplines and literary genres, including continental philosophy, predictive analytics, and science (or speculative) fiction. What might speculation look like through a geographical lens? And how would such thinking in a distinctly geographical register build on and possibly place into a wider context work on utopias, alternative communities, game worldscapes, and speculative futures? This conver…
Expanding the city digital twin in the context of crisis, cartography and computation
This commentary responds to Gillian Rose's ‘Visualising human life in volumetric cities: city digital twins and other disasters’ as a framework for thinking about crisis and visual cultures in digital twinning practices. It frames Rose's analysis as a specific intervention into the visual and cultural relationship between filmic depictions of disaster and catastrophe replicated through white and masculinist imaginaries of the ordered rational cit…
Digital Twin or Digital Kin: Misunderstandings and Myths about Urban Simulation, and Directions for Change
Using three case studies from the United States and Australia, this article explores the conditions required to make urban digital twin projects successful, considering a traditional urban digital twins (UDT) project and National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded 3D gaming digital twins in New York and a large-scale federated UDT platform in New South Wales (NSW) Australia. The authors argue that questions around interoperability and profit and ten…
From the urban factory to the metaverse: Understanding datafication, spatial computing and digital twinning practices
This article considers digital twins and digital twinning practices in relation to the spaces of the factory, city, and the “metaverse.” We draw on the work of urban and new media theorists to argue that digital twins are part of a long history of urban media and computation. Expanding on Walter Benjamin’s notion of phantasmagoria, we argue that the logics of the factory inherent in early digital twins are intensified and expanded in the more rec…
Sociology (10 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Art (6 works) · Political science (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Smart Cities and Technologies (4 works) · Archaeology (3 works) · History (3 works)