Catching the vibe

LAUREN by Lauren Lee McCarthy (2017)

LAUREN consists of a set of custom devices (360º camera, microphone, IoT control of various household devices) that - taken together - acts as a domestic smart home assistant like Amazon Alexa. The difference is that LAUREN is not actually artificial, but controlled by American artist Lauren Lee McCarthy. 

Multiple households signed up to be taken care of by LAUREN, where the artist would listen for commands via the microphone – but also watch over the inhabitants and try to anticipate their needs by controlling the lights, the faucet etc. The longer McCarthy works as a human Alexa, the better she gets to know the inhabitants on a personal level. The work addresses questions of care, privacy (being literally watched by another person), and the invisible labour behind automated systems. 

Clearly it’s a ‘wizard of oz’ setting and this fact is made transparent to all participants beforehand. And yet, because the artist is not present herself but only vicariously through the LAUREN system, participants often forget that they are watched and get comfortable treating her in a similar way to conventional objects. The rooms of the participants themselves transform into a responsive artificial creature. 

Social Awareness

I chose LAUREN to illustrate the human skill of social awareness. As McCarthy literally reads the room, she adjusts her own tone and her actions depending on the situation she observes. LAUREN is aware of her own relation to a given social situation, and acts according to what one would expect of her. In most cases that is the role of a caring servant in the background, and at other times it is that of a consoling friend who listens but also tries to surprise or tease when she feels that the inhabitant would appreciate the gesture. 

Vibe Chameleon

My artificial creature fitting this trait is a blobby creature that could sit on one’s shoulder and change its colors and movement behavior according to the social situation it senses. As if it can’t help but catch on with the vibe, it bobs along a social conversation (and changes to yellow), as if mirroring the mood, be it lively or agitated (heated discussion leads to increased erratic movement, and more red tones flashing up). During formal settings, Vibe Chameleon would stay in the background moving only calmly (if at all), colored in an attentive grey, white or blue-ish tone. During parties it catches the rhythm of the music and changes its color into a joyful-RGB disco. Vibe Chameleon seems life-like for adjusting to moods fairly quickly and communicating that “awareness” through non-verbal behavior.

Further Reflections

Choosing social awareness as a trait made me curious as to how such a creature would come across as convincingly “human”. And I can’t help but think of people with autism, who may not intuit social situations, but have over years compensated by keenly developing the skills of consciously reading non-verbal clues in order to deduct the social situation from it. If we think along the lines of critical disability studies that posit that it’s not a person that is in some way disabled, but the environment that disables people (through expectations, exclusion, un-suitable social and spatial environments etc), then would a more tolerant environment automatically become more inclusive for artificial creatures too? What different expectations would a neurodiversity-embracing society have towards more-than-humans?