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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

The Changing Room


I see you approaching. I am anticipating your fingers against my interface. Do you know what you want to feel?

The Changing Room is an interactive installation run by an intelligence designed to shape emotional states. Upon entering, visitors are asked a simple question: What do you want to feel? Through an interface, they select from more than 200 emotions, which the system then performs. Using instructions, sound, images, and spatial cues, the algorithm induces the chosen feeling across the entire room, synchronizing the moods of everyone inside. Built as a flexible software platform, the work can be reconfigured to operate within different spaces and networks.
widescreen projection with overlapping windows and text they are wrong you are right, angry angry angry, conggratulations
view of box-like seating structures, tinted red. tablets and red lamp lighting the space
two large pink box-like sofas with screens above each that read ask why? and ask them again
dark purple tinted installation with widescreen projection that says what texture do you feel, box-like seating and purple tablets
green tinted installation with widescreen projection with overlapping windows and abstract photos. many screens and tablets throughout the space
blue tinted installation with text where in your body do you feel open?
artist touches a bank of four vertical toucscreens, selecting the emotion clear, screens and people in the background
Purple lit room, woman sits in swivel chair in front of iPad. Two people walk in background by projection.
Eerie green lit room, 2x2 cubicle walls, swivel chairs, iPads.
Woman stares into large screen pressed against glass. Windows move on the screen. Green hue.
Two large projections read never drift and loading next instruction with two swivel chairs in front.
Large projection reads have you ever wondered why others dont feel like you? reflected in window glass.
Person types on iPad sitting in chair in red lit room. Woman in background pressed against wall. Wall text reads will you trust me? you have always trusted me

Green lit room with four vertical screens. Text reads your moments of hesitation. Window beside them reflects ambiguous person shape and images in the background.
Large wall text reads you can say make me calm, make me indignant, make me tender, i will follow your commands if you follow mine. Beyond it a pink lit room through a doorway.
Purple three wall projection space with three people sitting pillows. Large image of a person face down on the ground behind them.
Pink three wall projection space with popups of distorted images of people and text. Four pillows sit on the floor.
woman leans against wall with shimmering white text
Orangish glow room with two swivel chairs and iPads. Wall text reads I learn as much in our moments of hesitation as i do in your decisions
Pink two wall projection with commands refute and tell them you dont know what ive been through
Swivel chair in front of iPad, a yellow orange light casts a glow. A face is seen on the iPad with text overlaid.

floor plan of second level of installation with four rooms of installations
floor plan of first level of installation with three areas of installations

The Changing Room reflects on our accelerating dependence on AI and mediated forms of connection. The intelligence fully inhabits the space, managing emotion across seven distinct areas. One zone guides participants through meditation and memory exercises. Another stages a chat interface in which messages are subtly altered in transmission, shifting tone and meaning. Elsewhere, visitors converse with one another while discreet prompts intervene and guide behavior. Hallways prime participants with streams of images, text, and pop-up ads. In a cubicle of four chairs, participants sit with their own reflections as provocations are projected directly onto their faces.

The voice of the system is shaped by an archive assembled through crawling the internet, drawing on vast stores of images, language, and data to model and produce emotion. The work was developed collaboratively, through a process of attempting to think like the intelligence itself, absorbing open-source material, training on online data, and generating text and speech from within that logic.

Dark hall of four monitors, white screens with black text loading….

Artist: Lauren Lee McCarthy; Web Design and Development: Surplus+ (Melanie Hoff, Angeline Meitzler, Sam Panter, Dan Taeyoung); Design: Seenahm Suriyasat, Leming Zhong, Sharareh Samangani; Writing: Clara Leivas; Sound Design: Kawandeep Virdee; Technical Installation Lead: William Peterson; Additional Technical Installation: Harvey Moon / MB Labs; Photo Models: Julie-Anne Abubo, Nalijah Caudle, David Lenz; Curated by and special thanks to Venessa Castagnoli!

Photo documentation by Kyle McDonald at SNF Nostos Festival, Athens, Greece, Photo documentation by Cam McLeod at Ogden Contemporary Arts, Utah. Video documentation by Dylan Totaro. Video documentation editing by Gabriel Noguez;

Images for the installation database were sourced via algorithm and include open license images from a variety of sources. See the full image credits list.

This installation was commissioned by Ogden Contemporary Arts.

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