Lauren Lee McCarthy. Social Turkers

Lauren Lee McCarthy
Social Turkers, 2013
Performance, software, single channel video, colour, sound, 1΄ 49΄΄

For Social Turkers, McCarthy went on twenty dates with people she met on an online dating site called OkCupid, and used her phone to stream these dates online. She paid remote workers on a site called Amazon Mechanical Turk to watch in real time and send her directions via text message on what to do or say next, which she had to perform immediately. What if we could receive real-time feedback on our social interactions? What happens when we outsource the management of our personal lives to a software? Could this make us more aware in our relationships, shift shake us out of normal patterns and open us to unexpected possibilities?

Lauren Lee McCarthy works with performance, software, internet, film, photography, and installation to examine social relationships in the era of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living. She explores the ways we are taught to interact with algorithms, and how this shapes the way we interact with each other. Central to her work is a critique of the simultaneous technological and social systems we’re building around ourselves.

Biography

Lauren Lee McCarthy graduated from MIT with a BS in Computer Science and a BS in Art and Design. Lauren Lee McCarthy She is the creator of p5.js, and Co-Director of the Processing Foundation. Lauren’s work has been exhibited internationally, at places such as The Barbican Centre, London,  Ars Electronica, Linz, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Haus der Eelektronischen Künste, Basel, ZKM Karlsruhe, IDFA DocLab, Amsterdam, Science Gallery Dublin, Seoul Museum of Art, among many others. She has received numerous honours including a Creative Capital Award, Sundance Fellowship, Eyebeam Residency, and grants from the Knight Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Google, and Rhizome. Lauren is an Associate Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts.

https://lauren-mccarthy.com

 

 

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