Uncategorized
Brooklyn

An artist wants to set up cameras in your house and be your personal smart home

Forget Alexa. Meet LAUREN.

Lauren McCarthy will be your personal home assistant. (Screenshot)
For anyone considering a Nest or Alexa, artist Lauren McCarthy thinks she can use human intelligence to make your home run even more efficiently. All she’ll need is to install cameras and switches all over your house and watch you constantly.

Her project is called GET LAUREN and it’s about our unthinking interaction with technology.

“Lauren will control your home for you, attempting to be better than an AI, understanding you as a person,” according to McCarthy’s site. “You will be able to interact with her by calling her name, but she will also do things for you without your asking. She will learn faster than an algorithm, adapting to your desires and anticipating your needs.”

The piece will run for three days, after which McCarthy will come back and uninstall all the gadgets and cameras. After she’s reviewed all 72 hours of footage, she’ll send you a GIF of her favorite moment.

If you’re interested in signing up for LAUREN, you’ll need to make a video explaining what you’d like to get out of the project and send it to her through her site.

McCarthy is an artist who splits her time between Brooklyn and Los Angeles, where she’s an assistant professor of digital media arts at UCLA. She’s previously been a resident at the Sunset Park art/tech institution Eyebeam, and at NYU’s ITP program. She’s also the creator of the p5.js JavaScript library.

Before you go...

Please consider supporting Technical.ly to keep our independent journalism strong. Unlike most business-focused media outlets, we don’t have a paywall. Instead, we count on your personal and organizational support.

3 ways to support our work:
  • Contribute to the Journalism Fund. Charitable giving ensures our information remains free and accessible for residents to discover workforce programs and entrepreneurship pathways. This includes philanthropic grants and individual tax-deductible donations from readers like you.
  • Use our Preferred Partners. Our directory of vetted providers offers high-quality recommendations for services our readers need, and each referral supports our journalism.
  • Use our services. If you need entrepreneurs and tech leaders to buy your services, are seeking technologists to hire or want more professionals to know about your ecosystem, Technical.ly has the biggest and most engaged audience in the mid-Atlantic. We help companies tell their stories and answer big questions to meet and serve our community.
The journalism fund Preferred partners Our services
Engagement

Join our growing Slack community

Join 5,000 tech professionals and entrepreneurs in our community Slack today!

Trending
Technically Media