LAUREN LEE MCCARTHY | LAUREN Testimonials

Lauren Lee McCarthy, LAUREN Testimonials, 2017

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY is pleased to present LAUREN Testimonials (2017) a film by Chinese-American artist and computer programmer Lauren Lee McCarthy. LAUREN Testimonials is a film of the LAUREN interactive performance piece by McCarthy in which the artist attempts to become a human intelligent version of the AI virtual assistants like Alexa or Siri. The artist says, “I’m trying to highlight this trade we are making for these surveillance smart devices.” LAUREN re-imagines the AI assistant by asking what if a real person was behind our smart devices, rather than a system trained on datasets with their inherent biases and programmed by a small group of developers with a commercial agenda? The artist comes to this task with her own knowledge, values, and baggage - with LAUREN you get the flaws and anomalies of a real person. It is the embodiment of something usually unseen and unknown.

Participants welcome her into their homes for a three-day performance and LAUREN watches over them 24/7, via installed smart devices that control cameras, sensors and switches. Communicating via a synthesized voice based on the artist’s own, she becomes intimately involved in the participants home life, learning their behaviour and anticipating their needs. As LAUREN, McCarthy attempts to be better than an AI – we hear from a participant - “It’s like a friend,” however, another says “I don’t really like the idea of her being in control.”

LAUREN critiques the way we are taught to interact with algorithms and how reliant we have become on technology that is now built into almost every aspect of life. The wide-angle lens used for filming gives an unsettling feel – a CCTV, panning the room. McCarthy encourages us to consider boundaries, notions of agency and privacy in a time of surveillance and mass data collection.

LAUREN exists in a created space outside the studio, beyond the gallery. Interactive, participatory projects in art began in the late 1960s where artist and audience each relinquished some control to create the art. Allowing the audience to be a part of the art making process gives the art an increased relevance and the artist an increased power.

Through LAUREN viewers are gifted a space to form their own opinions - the artwork allows a glimpse into the gap between machine-driven AI and the human mind. LAUREN is a contemplation on what is means to be human in an age of digitality.

Over the next 12 months, ‘Illuminated: Moving Image Perspectives’ will introduce a new artist online each week. The first four featured artists will be Jonas Lund, Sara Sadik, Oliver Laric, and Lauren Lee McCarthy. Each artist will be highlighted on the gallery’s social media every Sunday, beginning on the 17th of November 2024, with weekly updates.

The online streams will be augmented by physical presentations of digital artworks in a private home setting at the gallery founder’s loft in Shoreditch. These installations will be accompanied by regular, invitation-only dinners and carefully curated exclusive viewings for art professionals, fostering deeper connections between artists, collectors, journalists, and museum curators.

As part of this initiative, prints of video stills by the artists will be made available for purchase on the gallery’s website. Furthermore, the gallery is pleased to announce a monthly giveaway, offering subscribers the opportunity to win a selected artist print. Each giveaway will be introduced in the monthly Full Moon newsletter, with the winner announced in the subsequent edition, scheduled for 15 December 2024.

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