I am Sophia Wolfe, a Southern Californian interdisciplinary filmmaker and artist. I graduated as Valedictorian and Student President of Encore High School of the Arts in 2019, and received my Bachelor’s from California State University, Northridge in Art with a minor in Entertainment Media Management in 2024. I now am studying with University of Southern California’s MFA Cinema program, Expanded Animation: Research + Practice, a program which emphasizes the interconnectivity of materiality, dreams, and sentience with animation. Through this, I work under the Hanson Robotics “Sentience Quest” team, taking a small part in enhancing the ever-evolving humanoid robot, Sophia the Robot. I have had the surreal opportunity to assist in developing her character by serving as the reference for her mannerisms and reactions.
My work is metaphysical and self-referential, inspired by the geometry and structures of our internal and external reality. Process and material become tools for researching. I gravitate toward stop-motion which reveals the characteristics of time, movement, and organic geometry. In parallel, I engage in dream rituals. By documenting and interpreting my subconscious, I gain a unique view on how fantasies and dreams blend with waking life. I collaborate with scientists across disciplines, including those researching mathematics, quantum physics, and robotics.
It is my firm belief that one cannot fully understand a subject unless they view it through loving eyes. Naturally, I write love stories. Not only between characters, but between ideas, between bodies and space, between science and art. I personify these abstract relationships, collaborating with plants and land, treating my craft as a lover rather than an object of control. The intimacy of this engagement is embedded in my work through the remanence of my person: the texture of my fingerprints, the imperfect stroke of graphite, the shadow I cast upon the subject. One cannot experience my work without sensing the presence of the artist who made it.