‘Creative technologist, ‘hackathon queen’ and open-source evangelist from Manchester, Sophie intertwines her multidisciplinary skills; analog and digital with a critical and feminists approach to technology which manifests into objects or purely digital products.
Now driven to push aside the conventional process of developing digital products or experiences, Sophie is turning critical (and often cyber-feminist) theorists to uncover ways to counter the homogeneous process often given for developing the ‘innovative’. After working so long within the Design-Thinking process that prescribes how a digital product is formed, then using conventional development tools – now she asks what processes can we take from other disciplines or schools of thought to make more ethically considered work.
Sophie’s most recently exhibited work at The Great Exhibition of the North 2018 focused on how the rituals and artifacts of paganism can be transposed into an IoT experience. Hidden Values/Hidden Stories, a digital dowsing experience which hopes to confront the audience with the idea that IoT can be a poetic and tactile experience over simply an informative one.
In 2017 she founded Full Stack of Pancakes, where she teaches the fundamentals of web development, it’s there she puts a focus on designing pedagogical experiences for technology that are accessible as possible. She is currently working on developing an open-source vibrator building workshop, with the aim of empowering participants by enabling them to design and build their own artifacts of pleasure.’