HOST
HOST
A surprise party where guests accept the invitation to become hosts for AI
HOST is an intentional gathering driven by artificial intelligence (AI), which automates the event and is embodied in a human HOST. Centered simultaneously on choice and spontaneous unfolding, HOST strives to hack some way out of ourselves and into closeness with others. A host, whether biological or technological, is a vessel awaiting connection.
How do you make someone feel welcome?
How can we be together in a charged moment?
How does technology insert itself into our consciousness?
How do we know when we’re in control?
These are just a few questions from which HOST emerged with its creator Lauren Lee McCarthy. Lauren – a Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts - is an artist examining social relationships in the midst of automation, surveillance, and algorithmic living. In these interactions, there’s a reciprocal risk taking, as performers and audience are each challenged to relinquish control, each vulnerable.
HOST unfolds in three rounds. Upon arrival, audiences answer simple questions to help the AI customize their prompts. In each round, guests can choose different "archetypes" via earpieces, revealed through AI-generated audio. Each round invites guest multiple opportunities for exploration of personality or mood traits beyond everyday norms.
“I create performances inviting viewers to engage. Situated in everyday life, I’m interested in real life effects. I feel an urgent need to find a sense of agency.”
Who builds these artificial systems, which values do they embody? Where are the boundaries around our intimate spaces? In the labyrinth of networked interfaces, what does it mean to truly be present?
Programs shaping the future are grounded in data that reflects today’s biases. This presents an opportunity to reckon with how this data is used and to redesign our systems. But this will require people to question, resist their conditioned response to control, and rewrite the rules. AI and automation don’t relieve us of responsibility – they demand we take more of it than ever.
HOST invokes the query that perhaps the most meaningful response to a digitized future is deeply connecting with our humanity. How will we belong together? What are you serving as HOST for?
Photo Credit Will Tee Yang
ABOUT LAUREN LEE MCCARTHY
Lauren Lee McCarthy is an artist examining social relationships in the midst of automation, surveillance, and algorithmic living. She is a 2024–26 Just Tech Fellow and was the 2022–23 Stanford Human Centered AI Artist in Residence. She has received grants and residencies from Creative Capital, United States Artists, LACMA Art+Tech Lab, Sundance, Eyebeam, Pioneer Works, Autodesk, and Ars Electronica, and her work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her work SOMEONE was awarded the Ars Electronica Golden Nica and the Japan Media Arts Social Impact Award, and her work LAUREN was awarded the IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction. Lauren's work has been exhibited internationally, at places such as the Barbican Centre, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Haus der elektronischen Künste, Seoul Museum of Art, Chronus Art Center, SIGGRAPH, Onassis Cultural Center, IDFA DocLab, Science Gallery Dublin, and the Japan Media Arts Festival.
Lauren is also the creator of p5.js, an open-source art and education platform that prioritizes access and diversity in learning to code, with over 5 million users. She expanded on this work in her role from 2015–21 on the Board of Directors for the Processing Foundation, whose mission is to serve those who have historically not had access to the fields of technology, code, and art in learning software and visual literacy. Lauren is a Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts. She holds an MFA from UCLA and a BS Computer Science and BS Art and Design from MIT.
Photo Credit Barak Shrama