I live and work on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong peoples of the Kulin. 

At present, my research focuses on processes of the imagination, loneliness and online isolation. I have a PhD from The University of Melbourne where I wrote about Large Language Modelling and the history and philosophy of science. I was thinking about how the development of Machine Learning changes the construction of virtual self-made worlds. I tried to describe the relationship between mourning the loss of an old world, and the typing/prompting of something new in its stead. I examined a number of environmental and technological fantasies in the history of psychoanalysis and post-war cybernetics, from Freud’s early drawings of cell walls, to Ferenczi’s womb-like sea, to the imagined limits of counting, collecting, and selling the ordering of words.  

Before that, I was interested in the changing conditions of online listening. I wrote a book called Hearing the Cloud (Zero Books). I wrote about streaming services, accelerationism, stochastic composition, and the politics of mood curation. Around this time I also started a publisher of old and new sci-fi called Formling.

Benjamin Noys wrote the following review of Hearing the Cloud:

"Hearing the Cloud guides us through the soundscapes of contemporary neoliberal capitalism, from chillstep to nightcore, and recaptures the possibilities of collective listening embedded within these musical forms. Emile Frankel traces a pattern recognition of our moment, poised between dystopian nihilism and the receding possibilities of utopia. Against irony, fragmentation, and chaos, Hearing the Cloud helps us hear the material presence of sound in our lives and the whispers of a better future."

Earlier still, I finished a Master's of Music from The Royal Conservatorium of the Netherlands and worked with a range of ensembles making virtual game environments to play and perform within.

I’ve worked as an essayist for The Quietus, Liquid Architecture, Disclaimer, Fuschbau Festival, Rewire, Texture Magainze, and The Barbican + Stray Landings. I’ve also lectured across Europe and Australia at CTM Festival Berlin, Unsound Festival Krakow + Adelaide, FIBER Festival Amsterdam, Norberg Festival in Sweden, and Soft Centre in Melbourne.

I continue to teach and have taught as a sessional academic in subjects across media studies/philospohy, contemporary politics, and digital design at The University of Melbourne and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).


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