Lauren Lee McCarthy exhibits quarantine-inspired ‘Later Date’

January 6, 2021

Design Media Arts Associate Professor Lauren Lee McCarthy, who also earned her M.F.A. from the department, is an artist based in Los Angeles whose work examines how surveillance, automation, and network culture affect our social relationships. She is the creator of p5.js, an open source programming language with over 1.5 million users, for learning creative expression through code online. She is co-director of the Processing Foundation, a non-profit whose mission is to promote software literacy within the visual arts, and visual literacy within technology-related fields—and to make these fields accessible to diverse communities.

Lauren Lee McCarthy, associate professor of design media arts at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture Image: UCLA

"Lauren Lee McCarthy, associate professor of design media arts at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, is exhibiting her new work “Later Date” at the Chronus Art Center in Shanghai. “Later Date” is part of the “We=Link: Sideways” exhibition, which features 22 works by 28 artists, spanning three decades of net art practice. The exhibition will run through May 2021.

“Later Date” is an examination of the emerging importance that “later” has taken on during the pandemic. McCarthy conducted a series of online chats with people, discussing plans for a future when everyone can go outside again. She refers to the piece, which features a slowly progressing text-only conversation, as a one-on-one performance with the person on the other end. At the same time, the conversation is also meant to be the opposite of the performance of a Zoom meeting, with the camera off and a focus on waiting instead of streaming.

As an artist, McCarthy focuses on the dynamics of social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation and algorithmic living. Her work “Someone” was awarded the Japan Media Arts Social Impact Award, and her work “Lauren” was awarded the IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction. “Later Date” was also exhibited at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam in November 2020."—  Jan. 5, 2021

This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the UCLA Newsroom website.
Read more about Lauren Lee McCarthy.

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