Lauren Lee McCarthy is an artist examining social relationships in the context of surveillance, automation, and network culture through performance, software, and installation. Her works consist of performances that invite viewers to engage. To be followed. To welcome her in as their human smart home. To attend a party hosted by artificial intelligence. In these interactions, there is reciprocal risk taking and vulnerability, as performer and audience are both challenged to relinquish control, both implicated, as each reformulate their own relationship to the systems that govern our lives.
Lauren has received grants and residencies from Creative Capital, United States Artists, Sundance, Eyebeam, LACMA, Mass MoCA, Pioneer Works, and Ars Electronica. Lauren is also the creator of p5.js, an open-source art and education platform that prioritizes access and diversity in learning to code. Lauren expands on this work in her role at the Processing Foundation, whose mission is to serve those who have historically not had access to the fields of technology, code, and art.
At MacDowell, she worked on the development of her Surrogate performance, which has been supported by a Creative Capital Award, United States Artist Fellowship, and Sundance Institute Lab Fellowship. Upcoming performances of the work include Fusebox Festival in Austin, and Stanford University Pigott Theater, where McCarthy is currently an artist in residence.
