Audrey Zheng – Looking Outwards – 10

Lauran McCarthy is goals: she is a new media artist and creator/lead-developer of p5.js. Her work examines how issues of surveillance, automation, and network culture affect our social relationships.

Accomplishments
Lauren’s work has been exhibited internationally, at places such as Ars Electronica, Fotomuseum Winterthur, SIGGRAPH, Onassis Cultural Center, IDFA DocLab, and the Japan Media Arts Festival. Lauren is an Assistant Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts. She is a Sundance Institute Fellow and was previously a resident at CMU STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Eyebeam, Autodesk, NYU ITP, and Ars Electronica / QUT TRANSMIT³.

Schooling
She graduated from MIT with a BS in Computer Science and Art and Design and also holds an MFA from UCLA.

Example Project: Facebook Mood Manipulator
Facebook Mood Manipulator is a browser extension that lets you choose how you want to feel and filters your Facebook Feed accordingly.

It is based on Facebook’s research into massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. The linguistic analysis is done with Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC), the same system used in the Facebook study. Studies show that browsing social media sites such as Facebook for extended periods can lead to a depressive mood.

 

For more information, visit Lauren’s website: http://lauren-mccarthy.com/