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Lauren Lee McCarthy


Info︎

LAUREN works
  1. LAUREN
  2. SOMEONE
  3. LAUREN Portable
  4. Exhibition: What can I do for you?
  5. Exhibition: You Can Say
  6. The Changing Room
  7. Waking Agents
  8. 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: Data Relations
  3. Exhibition: Reproduction Otherwise
  4. Surrogate Performance
  5. Womb Walk

Autonomous works
  1. Voice In My Head
  2. Driverless
  3. Unlearning Language
  4. HOST
  5. Seeing Voices

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

Other recent works
  1. Follower
  2. Social Turkers
  3. Vibe Check
  4. I’m glad you asked
  5. Autoreply
  6. pplkpr
  7. us+

Teaching & pedagogy
  1. p5.js
  2. Open Source Software Toolkits for the Arts Report
  3. Web We Want (W3C TPAC)
  4. Smarter Home
  5. Network Media
  6. Performing User
  7. Senior Capstone
  8. Disability, Design, and the Web
  9. Interactivity
  10. Conversation & Computation
  11. Social Hacking
  12. Critical APIs
  13. Computational Media
  14. Introduction to Programming for the Visual Arts (Free online course)

Archive
  1. Beyond the Breakdown
  2. How We Act Together
  3. Wake Words
  4. Friend Crawl
  5. Welcomer
  6. M/WITM
  7. The Changing Room: Brisbane
  8. Social Soul
  9. You Can Say
  10. Tools for Improved Social Interacting
  11. Inactive Account Manager
  12. Facebook Mood Manipulator
  13. LOVEINT
  14. SCRIPT

Mark

Follower


https://follower.today

Follower is a service that provides a real life follower for day. You sign up, download an app, and wait. You don't know when it will happen. The following lasts one day. At the end, you are left with one photo of yourself, taken by your Follower. The Follower stays just out of sight, but within your consciousness.


image with a black background with two white iphones showing parts of the follower app. On the left phone, the screen shots "waiting for a follower." as the header and "your following will occur sometime in the next week. You will be notified at the beginning of the day when it starts." as the text with black background. On the right iphone, it has "Your Follower is now following you." as the header and "Your Follower will stay with you until the end of the day. You may not see them, but they are there, following everything you do." as the text with white background.image of a black iphone on a macbook. The iphone has the app follower.today open with a map showing your current location and the destination point.
two people with long trench coats looking at the gallery exhibition text
exhibition image close up of four phones displaying images of the places the people in follower app were.
exhibition image close up of three photographs of places people from follower app were.
exhibition image closeup of two framed photographs, on the left is a person with a red coat walking on the sidewalk and on the right image you can see clearly the face of a woman in a crowded metro.
image of a crowded metro where you can see clearly the face of a woman.
image taken behind the glass of a grocery story of a person viewing a product.
image of a little girl looking outside the window
image of a person photographing a green sculpture
image of a two people, one standing with a speedo next to the swimming pool while the other is looking up at the other person while swimming in the pool
image of a person walking two dogs, one on each side, this image was taken behind this person.
image of the back of a person walking towards a police while crossing the street
image taken from far away of a person walking away from the camera
(above) Performance view at Coreana Museum of Art, Seoul, 2020 ©Eunju Choi, Ye-eun Lee

image taken of a person washing the dishes next to the window, this picture was taken outside their home.
image of a person viewing products in the store, a man is looking at her while walking on the street. image taken outside the store.
image of a person walking away from the camera in a crowed street.
close up image of a hand holding a phone with the screen showing the follower app with "You are no longer being followed" as the header and an image of a person looking out the window as the backgorund.

What is the relationship between attention and surveillance? There are sites you can go to to buy online followers, $10 can get you 1000 followers. We have this intense desire to be seen, to feel connected. But is that desire really fulfilled by watching your follower count tick upward? Could a real life follower provide something more meaningful or satisfying?

Video in collaboration with David Leonard. Design in collaboration with Michelle Lin. This work received support from Stochastic Labs and NYU.

Credit for images 4+5: SITUATION #128, SITUATIONS/Follower, installation view at Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2018 © Philipp Ottendörfer

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