roopa vasudevan

Additionally featuring the Reclaim Project (led by @taramcpherson.bsky.social), The Intersectional Tech Lab, The Data Fluencies Theatre Project, The Night School for Data Fluencies, DATA/FFECT, and many more.

Huge thank you to all the artists, researchers, and galleries collaborating with me!

Taking place in Boston (opens April 18 at Boston Cyberarts); Vancouver (opens May 29 at Or Gallery); and Lexington (opens June 6 at the Living Arts & Science Center).

Featuring Lai Yi Ohlsen, Lani Asunción, @jazsalyn.bsky.social, @oerum.org, @carolinesinders.bsky.social, and @rouxpz.bsky.social.

Together, these artists and researchers offer us ways to (re)consider our relationships with the data that surrounds and drives our everyday lives—and perhaps find new routes to agency once we are able to do so.

Each exhibition features work by six contemporary artists alongside experimental outputs from the broader Data Fluencies Project, an international research initiative based out of the Digital Democracies Institute (headed by @whkchun.bsky.social) at @simonfraseru.bsky.social.

Encompassing three thematically connected shows on view across North America in mid-2025, the Data Fluencies exhibition series investigates art's potential for reimagining our often-narrow understandings of data and machine learning.

So proud to finally announce a project I have been organizing for the past 3 years. An enormous and endless thank you to the artists, galleries, and researchers who have collaborated with me on this ambitious effort.

Save the date(s), and see you in Boston, Vancouver, and Lexington this spring. ✨

Alt Text as Poetry Alt text is an essential part of web accessibility. It is often disregarded altogether or understood through the lens of compliance, as an unwelcome burden to be met with minimum effort. How can we in...

This project comes to mind: alt-text-as-poetry.net

I had to save this for

Friends, for something to be open source, we need to see

1. The data it was trained & evaluated on

2. The code

3. Model architecture

4. Model weights.

DeepSeek only gives 3, 4. And I'll see the day that anyone gives us #1 without being forced to do so, because all of them are stealing data.

the wonderful critical coding cookbook is now available as an #openaccess pdf ✨🫧💜 criticalcode.recipes featuring recipes from @xinemata.bsky.social @ann9na.bsky.social @joanachicau.bsky.social @renick.bsky.social @rouxpz.bsky.social @autolumi.bsky.social @anu1905.bsky.social @drs.bsky.social & more

🔀 Passion for data, the Internet, and infrastructures a plus!

💌 Reach out to rvasudevan AT umass DOT edu with a portfolio/expression of interest (no DMs please!).

🗣️ Feel free to circulate widely among your networks, and reach out with any questions!

Jumping right in here with a collab opportunity:

📣 Looking for a print and web designer to collaborate this spring on a catalog project for a series of three exhibitions I am organizing across the US and Canada. This may also extend to helping devise the graphic identity for these shows. (cont'd)

I have done a decent job of that so far, but the constant pressure to move in other, faster ways has become much more noticeable to me as a result.

A lasting consequence of the pandemic, for me, has been realizing that I want to build duration, discovery and reflection into my everyday life, not just when I have a moment to squeeze it in.

I find myself getting overwhelmed much more easily these days than pre-March 2020. Things move too quickly for me now (including, sometimes, my own head).

passed my proposal defense this morning - I'm officially ABD now. endlessly grateful to my committee: @johnljacksonjr, @bzelizer, @whkchun, @cshirky and jessa lingel (not on twitter). so excited about moving forward on this project!

Thank you to everyone who has read drafts, offered feedback, and pushed me to make this piece stronger over the last year! I am super excited that this work is now out in the world.

This article examines notions of reciprocity inherent in open source collaborative practices, and makes the case that corporations take advantage of trust and goodwill in these communities for their own financial gain.

After years of hearing anecdotal and isolated incidents where big companies co-opt open source technologies or renege on collaborations only to release the product on their own, I analyzed this practice as indicative of a larger corporate strategy.

Excited to announce a new article in New Media & Society, "Share and share unlike: reciprocity, corporate power and the open source ethos"!

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14…

The special issue of Media-N contains some really interesting pieces about new media and remix, and I'm excited to dive in further! @NMCcomm

iopn.library.illinois.edu/journals/media…

Excited to share a timely article in the latest issue of Media-N:I discuss two of my political (and Trump-related!) art projects, and explore how the use of remix leads to a destabilizing of narratives surrounding political and cultural norms.

iopn.library.illinois.edu/journals/media…

Does anyone ever get to the point where they submit work NOT thinking it's complete trash? If so when does that happen? Asking for a friend #AcademicChatter #phdlife #phdstudent

Been keeping quiet on social media throughout this whole ordeal, but on a personal level I am feeling like the choice to move to Philly 2+ years ago was fated somehow.

both, simultaneously, all the time.

t.co/4VgJJZB9Mh

In the midst of all of the chaos in the world, I will be presenting my work during the @eyebeamnyc Rapid Response fellowship on Tuesday afternoon, as part of a week-long program on the amazing #EyebeamRR cohort. RSVP here:

rapidresponse.eyebeam.org

Valuable research plans come from being out in the world, not only reading what others have done. Yes studying is important, but having life experience outside of school can really make grad school so much richer and more generative.

What I didn’t realize was that all of my life experience would prove to be incredibly valuable as I got further into the program. It has led me to know what I want to research and to be able to make a solid plan to do it well ahead of schedule.

I was 34 when I started my PhD program and harbored a crippling insecurity for most of the first semester for being “behind”.

taking a social media break while I finish up some projects this month. I’m reachable on email, by text/phone, and messenger (not FB itself tho). see you on the other side ✌🏽