Sofi Xian (冼納然, also Sofia Lee)

is a researcher, cultural theorist, and multimedia artist based in Rotterdam, NL.

　Informed by a diverse background spanning computational linguistics, experimental photography, cinema, and sound art, she charts the semiotic terrain of consumer culture and theorises its evolution. Her particular focuses are on how unpopular, naïve, marginal, repetitive and forgotten detritus of culture serve as potent reservoirs of emergent aesthetics and ambient meaning formations.

　As a founding member of the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute, Sofi has pioneered approaches to 'consumer aesthetics' and contributed foundational research on the aesthetic Frutiger Aero, a term she also coined along with Froyo Tam. She has led workshops on consumer aesthetics research practices. In 2018, she also founded digicam.love, a community dedicated to highlighting the untapped aesthetic potential of forgotten point-and-shoot digital cameras.

　Sofi is ½ of the band 妳না with collaborator two4.41139.

　She holds a MA in Linguistics (Text Mining) from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

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■WRITING

　□2025.10.14 – What was the Windows 10 Aesthetic?

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