Friending Strangers by Lauren Mccarthy

Abstract:
Can we use technology to help us be more human? To smile more, to touch and to listen to each other? What if a computer could make decisions about our social relationships better than we could ourselves? Would our interactions be improved by algorithmically determining what to do and say? What happens if we crowdsource our dating lives and actually find love? A series of attempts to understand through hacking, art and self-experimentation.

About the Artist:
Lauren McCarthy is an artist based in Los Angeles and Brooklyn whose work explores social and technological systems for being a person and interacting with other people. She makes software, performances, videos and other things on the internet. She is the creator of p5.js. Lauren has exhibited at Ars Electronica, Conflux Festival, SIGGRAPH, LACMA, Onassis Cultural Center, IDFA DocLab and the Japan Media Arts Festival and has worked on installations for the London Eye and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from UCLA and a Bachelor of Science in computer science and art and design from MIT. She is an assistant professor at UCLA Design Media Arts. She was previously a resident at CMU STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Eyebeam, NYU ITP and Ars Electronica / QUT TRANSMIT³.