Sophia Pelka

Sophia Pelka is a practicing artist, rhetorician, and scholar. She received her BA from the University of Waterloo in Honours English Rhetoric and Professional Writing, with a minor in Fine Arts, and a specialization in Digital Media. In the Winter of 2016, she completed her MA at the University of Waterloo in Experimental Digital Media, working out of the Critical Media Lab.
Pelka carried her interdisciplinary interests into her MA, creating interactive, multi-modal art installations as digital tools for deconstructing and critiquing visual epistemologies. Through the Critical Media Lab she was able to employ speculative design and applied media theory as research methodologies. Her current research examines critical theory in visual and participatory culture, transmedia art, object oriented ontology, and maker culture in artistic contexts. Her major research project, Groteskkabinett, is an interactive, intersensory installation. Groteskkabinett explores contemporary embodiments of the grotesque tradition in both art and in everyday anxieties associated with technology through speculative design and experimental visual rhetoric. More specifically, the project pursues critical intersections of technology, anxiety, and grotesque imagery using the internet of things, digital imaging theory, and concepts of manufactured consent.

(Source:http://elo2016.com/sophia-pelka/)