Lauren McCarthy became the voice in the smart home

Guests staying overnight in Lauren Lee McCarthy’s Los Angeles apartment could address its smart-home system while the artist was in an Amsterdam gallery. According to UCLA’s account of her 2017 festival performance, she could watch them and respond from there. The helpful presence in the home was a person.[2]

LAUREN, the work’s title, names a human-performed assistant. McCarthy connected cameras, microphones and remotely controlled household devices, then undertook the watching and responding herself. Her project description includes locks, taps and appliances among the things she could control. The intelligence in this performance was the artist’s, rather than an AI model being evaluated.[1]

That change gives a familiar request an unfamiliar recipient. Someone is setting aside her own time to notice what another person needs. A domestic interface becomes a working relationship, even though the two people occupy different places. The arrangement makes attention part of the service.[1]

An audience for an everyday morning

IDFA’s catalogue dates the work to 2017 and describes its installation and live performance. Visitors in Amsterdam could observe a morning unfolding in Los Angeles. The gallery audience watched an artist whose role was to watch and assist people at home. Ordinary domestic routines became the material of a public artwork.[3]

That nested arrangement adds a third perspective to the usual pair of user and assistant. The performance has household participants, a remote helper and spectators. Each occupies a different position in the exchange. The catalogue now marks the project as no longer live; this is a historical work, not a newly launched household service.[3]

The personal motive complicates a reading of the work as simply an argument about surveillance. In UCLA’s 2018 interview, McCarthy discussed social anxiety and described her projects as ways to explore connection and feel more at ease with other people. She wanted encounters that moved beyond surface conversation. The assistant’s role supplied a particular way of being present in someone else’s life.[2]

McCarthy frames LAUREN around intimacy, privacy, convenience and agency. Her substitution makes an abstract exchange personal. An apparently private interaction with a device becomes a commitment of another person’s attention.[1]

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