Scene from Lauren McCarthy's SOMEONE installation - a human smart home command centre

In SOMEONE, you are invited to act as a human version of Amazon Alexa. For this exhibition, four participants’ homes have been installed with custom-designed smart devices, including cameras, microphones, lights, and outlets. When the homes are “on” you can watch over them and remotely control their networked devices from this command center. You may hear smart home occupants call out for “Someone”—prompting you to step in as their home automation assistant and respond to their needs.

Lauren McCarthy is an LA-based artist examining social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living. 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. She is an Assistant Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts.

The Barbican's AI: More than Human (16 May-26 Aug 2019) is an major exhibition exploring creative and scientific developments in artificial intelligence demonstrating its potential to revolutionise our lives. Part of Life Rewired, the Barbican's 2019 season exploring what it means to be human when technology is changing everything.