What if we could receive real-time feedback on our social interactions? Would unbiased third party monitors be better suited to interpret situations and make decisions for the parties involved? How might augmenting our experience help us become more aware in our relationships, shift us out of normal patterns, and open us to unexpected possibilities?

In her practice, Lauren McCarthy pushes the boundaries of existing technologies and customs in the realms of surveillance, automation and network culture to question what is desirable. In Alone Together, she is presenting three works of which two were created in collaboration with fellow-artist Kyle McDonald:

For Social Turkers, McCarthy developed a system using Amazon Mechanical Turk to assist her during her social outings: During a series of dates with new people she met on OkCupid, she streamed the interaction to the web using her phone. Turk workers were paid to watch the stream, interpret what was happening, and direct her what to do or say next.

For US+, McCarthy and McDonald devised a supplement to Google Hangouts which “analyzes speech and facial expression to improve conversation.” Monitoring your online conversation, it will covertly send you prompts to ask a question, to listen more or to be more positive. Might US+ come in handy if we in fact (un)learn how to have a ‘genuine’ conversation?

Pplkpr is an app that tracks, analyzes, and auto-manages your relationships. Using a smartwatch, Pplkpr monitors your physical and emotional response to the people around you, and uses machine learning to optimize your social life accordingly. Pplkpr can be understood as an intervention that examines the implications of quantified living for relationships. Posing as a startup, it critiques the techno-solutionism of startup culture.

Courtesy the artists

Lauren McCarthy - Social Turkers, 2013 - video (performance, website, software)
Lauren McCarthy and Kyle McDonald - US+, 2013 - video (software)
Lauren McCarthy and Kyle McDonald - pplkpr, 2014 - video (performance, website, software)

Image credit: Lauren McCarthy & Kyle McDonald - Social Turkers © Lauren McCarthy

Lauren McCarthy
°1987, Boston, MA, USA

Lauren McCarthy is an LA-based artist examining social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living. She is the creator of p5.js, and Co-Director of the Processing Foundation. McCarthy’s work has been exhibited internationally, at places such as The Barbican Centre, Ars Electronica, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Haus der elektronischen Künste, SIGGRAPH, Onassis Cultural Center, IDFA DocLab, Science Gallery Dublin, Seoul Museum of Art. She has received numerous honors including a Creative Capital Award, Sundance Fellowship, Eyebeam Residency, and grants from the Knight Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Google, and Rhizome. She is an Associate Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts.

Kyle McDonald
°1985, San Diego, CA, USA

Kyle McDonald is an artist working with code. He is a contributor to open source arts-engineering toolkits like openFrameworks, and builds tools that allow artists to use new algorithms in creative ways. He has a habit of sharing ideas and projects in public before they're completed. He creatively subverts networked communication and computation, explores glitch and systemic bias, and extends these concepts to reversal of everything from identity to relationships. Kyle has been an adjunct professor at NYU's ITP, and a member of F.A.T. Lab, community manager for openFrameworks, and artist in residence at STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon, as well as YCAM in Japan. His work is commissioned by and shown at exhibitions and festivals around the world, including: NTT ICC, Ars Electronica, Sonar/OFFF, Eyebeam, Anyang Public Art Project, Cinekid, CLICK Festival, NODE Festival, and many others. He frequently leads workshops exploring computer vision and interaction.