Paul Roquet is an associate professor in media studies and Japan studies at MIT's Comparative Media Studies / Writing program. His research focuses on how media becomes environmental and the implications of this mediation on everyday spatial awareness.
Roquet's first book, Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self (University of Minnesota Press, 2016; available open access via Manifold and PDF), delves into the use of music, video art, cinema, and literature to create "healing" atmospheres designed for relaxation and reflection. The book establishes a critical framework for understanding what Roquet terms ambient subjectivation, which refers to the use of atmospheric media as indirect methods of personal mood regulation that alleviate social stressors while maintaining the illusion of an autonomous liberal subject. By analyzing ambient aesthetics and their application in urban Japan, Roquet explores how ambient media both reinforces and critiques contemporary expectations of emotional autonomy and individualized self-care.
Roquet's most recent book, The Immersive Enclosure: Virtual Reality in Japan (Columbia University Press, 2022), introduces a novel perspective on virtual reality headsets as forms of head-mounted perceptual enclosures. This work extends his earlier research on ambience by theorizing the implications of moving environmental awareness into the domain of computation. In addition to the book, Roquet has produced various related writings, including an essay and introduction for a VR special issue he co-edited with Brooke Belisle for Visual Culture, an article on spatial audio in Sound Studies, a short piece on peripheral vision in VR for Real Life, and an essay on VR telework robots in Media Theory (with a shorter version in LOGIC magazine).
Recently, Roquet has been writing about YouTube ambience videos, the cultural history of motion sickness, and the impact of 'metaverse' hype in Japan. He has also been exploring experimental animation to understand how human affect, emotion, and labor are transformed into audiovisual space. This exploration includes a piece on the augmented reality future in Dennō Coil, an analysis of the cosmic imagination in Night on the Galactic Railroad, and essays on the labor of solo animation practitioners such as Tsuji Naoyuki, Wada Atsushi, and Kuno Yōko.
At MIT, Roquet teaches courses in media studies, including digital and immersive media, cinema, and literature, with a particular emphasis on integrating East Asian perspectives into the curriculum.
Paul was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2009 – he was chosen in the Graduate Fellow category.