You Can Get Followed for a Day in This Privacy-Shattering Performance

Follower from Lauren McCarthy on Vimeo.

As comfortable manipulating moods with Facebook as she is crowdsourcing her OKCupid dates, New-York based artist and programmer Lauren McCarthy recently leveled-up her social experimentation with Follower, a performance art piece that deeply probes notions of privacy, surveillance culture, and being followed, and is also conspicuously inspired by human-on-demand services. Exploring the ways in which technology and social tools and platforms shape contemporary human behaviors, McCarthy developed the project during an artistic residence at Stochastic Labs in San Francisco during a monthlong stay in the cradle of social media.

Since last week, Follower has been available for New Yorkers to discover. This time around, McCarthy tackles her main research concerns from a different angle, replacing herself with others as her work's central protagonist, and at the same time emphasizing the sharing economy.

“In previous works I often turned the attention on myself, letting the internet determine my actions, Mechanical Turk workers guide my dates, or an algorithm correct my social behaviors,” McCarthy tells The Creators Project. “In Follower, I was interested in looking outward and discovering how intently focusing on others might change me in some way, and perhaps change them a bit, too,” she adds. In doing so, she generates an intentional psychological pressure that controls and affects her subjects' behaviors when they're aware that an unseen person is watching nonstop for a day, monitoring their smallest deeds and gestures.

By filling out a minute-long online application, and by letting McCarthy know the reason why you want to be followed and why should someone follow you, you will be provided with an iPhone app followed by an IRL “customized-experience” that not only blurs the line between the real and virtual, but also raises some social issues pertaining to self-esteem, presentation, or even the appetite for fame. “I think everyone has their own experience of this, it is intentionally left open for interpretation,” she explains. “I hope that my presence as the follower may provide a subtle heightening of your experience or awareness, to know there is a second person there, unobtrusively living your life with you in some sense,” she concludes.

You can apply to be part of the performance by clicking here and following the instructions. See more of Lauren McCarthy's work on her website.

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