Better loving through technology: a day at the sex-toy hackathon

Sound-controlled vibrators, 3D-printed clitorises and 'Michael Gove' as a safe word: coders and inventors try to find the future of sex in south London

Twelve years of Catholic school prepares you for a lot of weird things, but walking into a church to find 50 people testing vibrators on each other's noses, strapping each other into inflatable hug machines and flinging around bits of deconstructed sex toys under a huge stained-glass window that reads THOU ART THE KING OF GLORY O CHRIST is not one of them.

I am at Goldsmiths, University of London, in the church of what used to be St James Hatcham but was transformed, some years ago, into an arts "hub". Hacksmiths, the student-run tech society at the university, runs "hackathons" - invention marathons - where over the course of three days, attendees of varying skills and backgrounds camp out on air beds and eat pizza while brainstorming and building machines. For this event, the theme was sex technology.