Writings
and Essays

<Blog Space>



❶  Web-based Sound Art.
❷  Radio, Technology and Gender.
❸  Politics of Breathing
❹  Cyberdecks, ounding machines.
❺  
eliza outlaw
June 2026



//Sounding_Technologies, Engaged_machine.//



Introduction.

//Sounding_Technologies, Engaged_Machines// is as a multi-channel installation piece that uses physical computing elements to create, present, and playback sound across a series of small, purpose-built devices. Informed by the Slow-Technology movement (1), the piece investigates how decelerating technologies by creating, re-using and re-purposing devices and software could ultimately produce a feminist and environmentalist approach to radical listening. Supported and embedded in Cyber (2), Glitch (3) and Xenofeminisms (4) alongside Technomaterialist (5) theory and practice, the piece aims to assess how we use, design and distribute technology to dismantle the current inaccessible androcentric model of working, slowing down consumption. The work emphasises the process of research and practice over any finalised output, drawing attention to the feminist process of knowledge sharing.

Slowing down technology not only requires a change in how we engage with everyday items but also helps to assess inequality across access, design and production. “A Slow approach to technology also means interrogating who is included and who is missing, looking critically and reflexively at the limited range of bodies and subjectivities that have designed, built, and deployed many of the technologies that come to be used by all the rest of us - and equally to interrogate both the power structures they uphold and the market forces that uphold them. Importantly, that includes accounting for the ways that we ourselves may be complicit in or the beneficiaries of those forces, requiring us to look more closely at our own habits of using technology.” (6) Inspired by an online female-based technology wave, this piece references the second emergence of cyberdecks and creative computing. My own application of this work proposes the possibilities of sound within the sphere of feminist computational arts by focusing on recycling materials for tech longevity, customisation and personability as large-scale tech companies decenter the user and prioritise profit. Ultimately addressing how contemporary technologies shape communication, interaction and sound in art. 

To quote Donna Harroway, a feminist technology “means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, spaces, stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.” (7)


Conceptual and Contextual Starting Point

The immediacy of this work is rooted in a societal rejection of sleek, sealed, AI-centric technologies that now dominate the tech world, with a need to return to physical media and personalised technologies in the wake of an AI-forced environmental crisis. Across social media platforms, there is a movement towards self-created tech, led and executed by women and queer people. With everything from creating a plant watering tomadatchi (8) to a computer in a purse (9), these creators are reimagining the possibilities of technologies for themselves under the brand of “cyberdecks”, a term repurposed from a traditionally male-dominated community. 

Coined by William Gibson in the dated book “Neuromancer” (10) (1984), cyberdecks have traditionally had a male-dominated cult following that treats creating a computer like an army mission. Annie Goh and Marie Thompson explore the effect of sexism in sound-based technology conversations, stating that “Particularly in the technocentric fields relating to electronic-based musics and sound arts, a masculinist and heteronormative bias has compounded an often under-acknowledged hostility to feminist agendas of change or reform.” 11 Often portable, retro and decked in khaki, cyberdecks have had a name for themselves as a tech supremacist item, exclusive and expensive. However, as people have become tired of big tech corporations in the 21st century, cyberdecks stand out as an existing medium that has been redefined as a feminist tool. 

Much of what is interesting about the cyberdeck movement 2.0 is how women are focusing on the process, and this is not to say that there has never been a tutorial made by men; however, the attention is shifted from product to process. Designed to be shared online and through social media, the drive is to inspire conversations around technology and to educate a completely new audience.  Although this movement may not be given academic scholarship at the moment, as with a longstanding history of diminishing “girly” hobbies or interests, this work is vital in exploring and rediscovering technology for a generation that is dependent on it. 

In articles such as “The hottest anti AI gadget is a cyberdeck” (12) on Dazed or “The coolest girls you know are making cyberdecks” (13) in Russh, it is clear to see how interested people are in a movement defined and curated by women and queer people. As a point of discussion, the intrigue behind cyberdecks fuelled this project and provided a base starting point for my own attempts at physical computing.

“Technology needs feminism. Too often, conversations about feminism and technology are limited to the representation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)… however, sexism, misogyny, and patriarchy are deeply interwoven throughout the tech industry and the products that we use on a daily basis.” (14)


Research

The work began with a combination of material from creative computational arts, contemporary research on social media and technology-based intersectional feminist thinking. I was interested in how the cyberdeck movement fit within existing theories around Slow, Feminist and Sound Technologies. In the book The Good Robot: Why Technology Needs Feminism, Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney explore what makes “good technology” from a feminist perspective. “Our combined two decades-worth of interest in queer, feminist, anti-racist and decolonial thinking has led us to approach the question of “good technology” quite differently. Just because a technology functions as intended without any technical errors does not mean that it has been designed with good intentions in mind, nor will it be deployed in ways that more broadly support good outcomes for everyone.” (16) They propose that “good technology” requires critical thinking into the resourcing, production, intentions and design whilst analysing who these technologies have been created by and who they are created for.

Ursula K. Le Guin, in The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (17), explores how the first technologies were gatherer technologies: the bag, the bowl, and the carrier, and yet societies have continuously grown accustomed to glorifying the invasive hunter with his penetrative spear and tall tales. She proposes that these fictions are gendered and, by doing so, analyses how technologies have since prioritised the needs of the hunter. Inspired by the feminist role of the gatherer, the person providing the food and the resources and decided that the adaptability of the carrier was ultimately a good model to start thinking about how to redesign a “good” technology as a form of world-building. Digital or modern technologies, still as a relatively infant field of discovery, require critical development and shaping, in the words of Legacy Russell, “We are faced with the reality that we will never be given the keys to a utopia architected by hegemony. Instead, we have been tasked with building world(s) we want to live in.” (18)

Similarly to reference again, Slow Technologies, a large part of this project was starting from scratch and identifying what components were essential in re-engineering devices. “We practice slowness together when we agree to witness each other in the discomfort of that [environmental] discomfort… and when we consciously decide to seek other ways forward: joining to imagine world(s) we want to live in, and committing to building tools and practising techniques to get us there.” (19) To create a feminist listening tool is to analyse what problems exist and to attempt to redesign them. I identified that recycling materials and taking time to assess the journey of a specifically produced component were other good ways to develop a feminist project.

The Technomaterialist Manifesto expands on this by stating that “Technologies should be re-engineered to directly benefit society, not to propagate existing forms of oppressions. We call on feminist & anti-racist technologists to build tools to protect humans from oppression and also to build new freedoms (“freedom to” rather than simply “freedom from”).” (20) All of these theories together shaped how I realised my own form of a sound-making cyberdeck that deploys feminist strategies in the design decisions in order to cater for tech minorities.

To create these worlds successfully, I asked a diverse handful of people what their main priorities were regarding technology. The main recurring themes were safety without overarching security, environmental concerns, portability, personability and independence. This was the final part of my research that consolidated the theory and brought the work to a practical stage.


Experiments and project blog.

I started working on cyberdecks by following various tutorials online from creators such as Ube Boobey 9. “Fueled by curiosity and conviction,” (21) with the idea that I might create a host for an interactive website as I had researched previously but I instead became more interested in the workings of the individual components. 

To realise the ideas of the piece, I had to learn all elements of physical computing with no prior experience. This process was slow and essential to the nature of the work, as it helped me to understand what would be successful, continuing into the final term. My following idea was to create a series of small independent sound-making devices, although I had no idea where to start with only a loose idea of what was possible, so I attended several workshops that allowed me to understand the basics, not necessarily with sound in mind. 

The first troubleshooting I conducted was creating a light-responsive LED. The LDR could later be applied to a transducer to create a tone whose pitch would be responsive to light. With trial and error, I decided that it would be hard to monitor light in a gallery space in winter so the LDR was replaced with an ultrasonic distance sensor. This did not rely on an uncontrollable factor, but instead responded to the user approaching and interacting with the piece.

The cyberdeck was the easiest build and, in turn, the most expensive item to put together. The more finalised the components costed more and although it was an interesting starting point that for, I could not edit the actual setup as much as I wanted to for sound. However, I had developed a non-invasive period tracker app after researching things that women and queer communities might prioritise in apps. The design included using spreadsheets to calculate cycle duration and ovulation or period dates designed by Aliza Auftichtig (22) I adapted this design to send the data to a website that could, in turn, send you a GIF relating to the days of a cycle, something more accessible and interactive than a spreadsheet to look at.

I went in the other direction and made an SSTV decoder (slow scan television is a radio device that decodes sound waves into images, the predecessor to meme culture and an excessively sexist sport that I had skewed), following an online tutorial from 101 Things (23). This was successful in growing my knowledge of physical computing, but still not perfected for the piece. 

I finally landed on creating an MP3 player. This idea could be connected to transducers and other small, independent devices to create a range of sounds. I collected the components and learnt to solder to make a compact item with a simple layout of three large buttons on a tin that would hold the electronics, designed for accessibility and customisability, following the idea that “Good technology is messy, because good technology is responsive to local human context.” (24) Something essential to the design was that the tin was a “carrier” (25) and could be opened up, to see/play/tinker with any electronics inside, allowing complete transparency. Everything other than the DF player component was recycled from discarded tech items.

To go on the MP3 player, I made a final series of compositions that would reflect the ideals of the research for this piece. They would not value perfection but instead highlight communal working, recycled materials and feminist thinking through recording, sampling and revisiting my own personal sound archive with the idea that “Sonic Cyberfeminisms embraces a plurality of themes and perspectives on the interrelations between sound, gender and technology.” (26)


Conclusion/ Intended result
The intended result is an informed, intersectional feminist thinking and listening device that not only calls out sexism, but becomes a model for discussing social injustice. The devices I am creating will have several different forms: an MP3 player projecting selected tracks, transducer-based speakers controlled by interaction or light and radio transmissions throughout the space, received by small playback devices.


The process of learning all the elements of technology has been a slow and sometimes frustrating learning curve, even with the academic support of a university. I have found it very liberating to understand what goes into certain technologies and even create my own; however, without this initial introduction, I would have struggled. This pushes the prevalence of the project for me to expand on this work as a potential educational resource. Alongside any finalised outcome of this work, it is essential to have something that explains the process in order to realise the theory. I intend to accompany the work with a zine and workshop that creates factorial guides and suggestive resources to enable the viewer to create the same items.



Bibliography
  1. Strauss, C, F. (2025) Slow Technology reader. Valiz, Amsterdam.
  2. Seu, M. (2023) Cyberfeminsm Index. Inventory Press.
  3. Russel, L. (2020) Glitch Feminism. Verso.
  4. Cuboniks, L. (2018) Xenofeminism Index. Polity Press.
  5. “Association loi 1901″ (2026) Technomaterialism. Available at: https://technomaterialism.com/twenty-point-manifesto (24/06/2026).
  6. Strauss, C, F. (2025) Slow Technology reader. Valiz, Amsterdam.
  7. Harroway, D. (1985)  Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s. The Socialist Review.
  8. Narla, T. (2026) 'I'm making a Tamagotchi for my plant!' [Instagram]. 18, March. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVxD03DEW2x/  (Accessed: 24/06/26).
  9. Tan, A. (2026) 'DIY mermaid Cyberdeck' [youtube]. 13, March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aumh4oknVuM (Accessed: 24/06/26).
  10. Gibson, W. (1984)  Neuromancer. Ace Books.
  11. Thompson, M and Goh, A. (2027) Sonic Cyberfeminism. Goldsmiths Press.
  12. Rodgers, R. (2026) The hottest anti-AI gadget is a Cyberdeck. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/cyberdecks-tiktok-ube-boobey-diy-computer-gadget/ (24/06/24).
  13. Steiber, M. (2026) The coolest girls you know are building Cyberdecks. Available at: https://www.russh.com/the-return-of-the-cyberdeck/(24/06/24).
  14. Drage, E. and Mclnerney (2024)  The good robot. Bloomsbury.
  15. Drage, E. and Mclnerney (2024)  The good robot. Bloomsbury.
  16. Drage, E. and Mclnerney (2024)  The good robot. Bloomsbury.
  17. Guin, U, K, L. (2019) Carrier Bag Theory Of Fiction. Ignota Books.
  18. Russel, L. (2020) Glitch Feminism. Verso.
  19. Strauss, C, F. (2025) Slow Technology reader. Valiz, Amsterdam.
  20. “Association loi 1901″ (2026) Technomaterialism. Available at: https://technomaterialism.com/twenty-point-manifesto (Accessed: 24/06/2026).
  21. Strauss, C, F. (2025) Slow Technology reader. Valiz, Amsterdam.
  22. Auftichtig, A. (2020) Period tracking without tracking. Available at: https://www.alizaaufrichtig.com/period-tracker  (Accessed: 24/06/2026).
  23. Dawson, J. (2023) Welcome to 101 things Documentation! Available at: https://101-things.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ (Accessed: 24/06/2026).
  24. Drage, E. and Mclnerney (2024)  The good robot. Bloomsbury.
  25. Guin, U, K, L. (2019) Carrier Bag Theory Of Fiction. Ignota Books.
  26. Thompson, M and Goh, A. (2027) Sonic Cyberfeminism. Goldsmiths Press.



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❶ Writings coming from everything everything from my dissertation to my own personal interest, often supporting other projects. All are unpublished unless otherwise stated.
Copyright of Eliza Outlaw