How does art inform our relationships with and understanding of the technologies that surround us? Stanford Public Humanities invites you to join a provocative virtual public conversation between Public Knowledge Fellow Danielle Adair and acclaimed artist Lauren Lee McCarthy.

Drawing on McCarthy’s recent projects including Follower, Surrogate, and AUTO, Adair and McCarthy will explore the relationship between artistic making and critical inquiry. Their dialogue will cover approaches to research, methodology, and project development at the intersection of art and technology. The conversation will also consider pedagogy in relation to critical AI studies and new media.

Based in California’s leading hubs of technology and entertainment—the Bay Area and Los Angeles—Adair and McCarthy will reflect on how local contexts connect with global conversations about algorithmic living and media practices.

This hour-long Zoom webinar will include time for audience Q&A, so please come prepared to engage directly with the speakers. 

Please RSVP at this link to attend.

Lauren Lee McCarthy is an artist examining social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living. Lauren is the creator of p5.js, an open-source creative coding platform that prioritizes inclusion and access with over 5 million users worldwide, a professor at UCLA Design Media Arts, and co-director of the UCLA Social Software Lab. She has been recognized by United States Artists, Sundance, Eyebeam, and Creative Capital, and is in the collection of LACMA and the Whitney Museum of Art.

Danielle Adair is a 2025-26 Public Knowledge Fellow and an Institute for Human-Centered AI Research Fellow at Stanford University, where she is completing her doctorate in Theater and Performance Studies this spring. Her scholarship examines the intersections of media and performance, with particular attention to artists’ experiments with new technologies, including smartphone platforms. She is also an artist-performer who holds an MFA in Studio Art and in Critical Studies from California Institute of the Arts.