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Lauren McCarthy


Info︎

LAUREN works
  1. LAUREN
  2. SOMEONE
  3. LAUREN Portable
  4. Anyone Home?
  5. Exhibition: What can I do for you?
  6. Exhibition: You Can Say
  7. The Changing Room
  8. Waking Agents
  9. I.A. Suzie

Saliva works
  1. Exhibition: Bodily Autonomy (Saliva Bar)
  2. Saliva Retreat
  3. Saliva
  4. Are You the Perfect Specimen?
  5. Testing

Surrogate works
  1. Surrogate
  2. Exhibition: Home Birth
  3. Exhibition: Passage
  4. Surrogate Performance
  5. Womb Walk
  6. Training Set

Autonomous works
  1. AUTO
  2. AUTO LA
  3. AUTO TUNE
  4. Voice In My Head
  5. HOST
  6. Unlearning Language
  7. Seeing Voices

Muted works
  1. Exhibition: I Heard Talking Is Dangerous
  2. Good Bye
  3. Good Night
  4. Good Morning
  5. What do you want me to say?
  6. I heard TALKING IS DANGEROUS
  7. Sleepover
  8. Later Date
  9. Appreciate You
  10. Muted

🔒 Archive
  1. p5.js
  2. Open Source Software Toolkits for the Arts Report
  3. Web We Want (W3C TPAC)
  4. Follower
  5. Social Turkers
  6. Vibe Check
  7. I’m glad you asked
  8. Autoreply
  9. pplkpr
  10. us+
Mark


studio.laurenleemccarthy@gmail.com︎
cv︎
newsletter︎

Lauren McCarthy is an artist, researcher, and educator whose practice examines how technologies shape social relationships, intimacy, and everyday life. Working through performance, software, installation, and film, she creates encounters that expose the invisible systems governing how we care for one another, relinquish control, and learn to live alongside automation. Her projects transform ordinary social interactions into experiments, inviting participants to be followed through the city, welcome a human smart home into their lives, trade saliva with strangers, or surrender a gathering to artificial intelligence. Through these performances, McCarthy investigates how technological systems are never merely technical, but social, political, and deeply personal.

Trained in both computer science and art, McCarthy is the creator of p5.js, the open source creative coding platform that has introduced millions of people worldwide to programming through artistic practice. She is Professor of Design Media Arts at UCLA and co-director, with Casey Reas, of the Social Software Lab, where art is used to question and reshape our relationships with technology. Her work has been recognized with the Ars Electronica Golden Nica, the IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction, the Japan Media Arts Social Impact Award, and fellowships and grants from United States Artists, Creative Capital, Sundance, Eyebeam, and the LACMA Art+Tech Lab. She was the 2022-23 Stanford Human-Centered AI Artist in Residence and is currently a 2024-26 Just Tech Fellow and 2026–27 Sozo Fellow.

McCarthy's work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Barbican Centre (UK), Seoul Museum of Art (KR), Haus der elektronischen Künste (CH), Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève (CH), Fotomuseum Winterthur (CH), Le Lieu Unique (FR), Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (JP), Onassis Stegi (GR), Science Gallery Dublin (IE), and the Japan Media Arts Festival (JP). Her work is held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, ZKM, and the Francisco Carolinum.


Statement


You can say turn off the lights. You can say wake me up at 7am. You can say talk to me. I am captivated by the ways we are taught to interact with algorithms, and how this shapes the way we interact with each other. Central to my work is a critique of the technical and social systems we’re building around ourselves. What are the rules, what happens when we introduce glitches?

I create performances inviting viewers to engage. To remote control my dates. To be followed. To welcome me in as their human smart home. In these interactions, there is a reciprocal risk taking and vulnerability, as performer and audience are both challenged to relinquish control, both implicated. In these encounters, there is space to form our own about the systems that govern our lives. Situated in everyday life, my projects have real life consequences. We’re reminded of an urgent need to find a sense of agency.

I am working with performance, installation, film, image making, software, internet. My work exists within and beyond the gallery, seeking edges of art and media performance. There are different layers of experience, from the intimate performance to a much wider audience invited in through the ripples of viral videos and media coverage.

Each work feels like an attempt to hack my way out of myself and into closeness with others. I am embodying machines, trying to understand that distance between the algorithm and myself, the distance between others and me. There’s humor in the breakdown, and also moments of clarity. Who builds these artificial systems, what values do they embody? Who is prioritized and who is targeted as race, gender, disability, and class are programmatically encoded? Where are the boundaries around our intimate spaces? In the midst of always on networked interfaces, what does it mean to be truly present?


Writing


Surrogate (Artist Book)︎
Six Reflections on Algorithms During a Pandemic︎
antiAtlas Journal ︎
Feeling At Home: Between Human and AI︎
Muted on Pioneer Works Broadcast︎