Lauren Lee McCarthy: "Becoming Auto"

This lecture is part of the Global Arts + Humanities' Society of Fellows 2025-26 event series, "Artificial Intelligence: Propositions from the Arts + Humanities" — a series of lectures by artists and scholars whose work foregrounds the ethical obligations arising from the simulation of human intelligence and increased surveillance.

Lauren Lee McCarthy is an artist examining social relationships in the midst of automation, surveillance and algorithmic living, and she is a professor at UCLA Design Media Arts. McCarthy critiques the technological and social systems we’re building around ourselves. She explores reciprocal risk taking and vulnerability, as performer and audience are challenged to ask: 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? 

Introduction: Chris Coleman, Professor of Art and Director of ACCAD (Ohio State)  
Moderator: Katherine Behar, Professor of New Media Arts (Baruch College)