Lauren Lee McCarthy’s AUTO: A Collective Encounter with Autonomous Systems

“Hey you, Totally Auto. Don’t think. Just follow. Nobody’s driving. Lose control. We’re making a new vehicle. We’re becoming Auto.” With these words, artist Lauren Lee McCarthy sets the tone for AUTO,  a work that asks what it means to let systems guide us and what remains of our own agency.

McCarthy is a Chinese-American artist whose practice looks at intimacy, agency and care within technological systems. She works with performance, code and installation to examine how technology structures social behaviour. As the creator of p5.js, she helped make creative coding more accessible, emphasising inclusion and openness in digital culture. Her practice sits in a lineage of artists who use art to expose and reimagine power structures, working from within the systems of surveillance and automation rather than outside them. Her work has been exhibited internationally and previously appeared at HEK in the 2020 exhibition «Real Feelings» with the interactive installation Vibe Check, which analysed visitors’ emotional reactions to each other.

For Zürich’s Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (KiöR) program, curated by HEK’s director Sabine Himmelsbach, McCarthy brought AUTO  to Münsterhof. A compact self-driving Swiss PostBus stood in the square. Its bright yellow colour is instantly familiar in Switzerland, while its rounded, futuristic form connects it to PostBus’s real-world automated mobility projects, where autonomous shuttles are tested as part of the country’s future public transport infrastructure. Removed from those test routes and placed in the middle of the city, it became a point of entry into thinking about automation, public space and decision-making.

Across the EU, nine in ten workers now rely on digital tools and one in three already use AI tools at work, particularly chatbots and office assistants. At the same time, digital monitoring and algorithmic management are expanding, with concerns about privacy, work intensity and autonomy. Decisions about where and how automation is introduced often sit with a small number of institutions and companies, while those who live with the consequences have limited influence over the design of these systems.

McCarthy’s frames the wider conditions shaping the work:

“As AI proliferates, human labor is devalued and replaced. Wealth and power is concentrated among the most privileged and highly-educated. The design of automated systems is never neutral and has very significant risks when it comes to moving vehicles. As technology advances faster than regulation, decisions about how to respond to risks and how to ethically test these systems are made with little oversight.”

In Switzerland, new regulations are enabling broader use of highly automated vehicles after years of controlled trials. These projects promise flexible mobility but rely on vast amounts of data and energy, raising questions about safety, access and the environmental costs that accompany such systems. They also highlight a deeper issue: who gets to design the automated infrastructures shaping everyday life?  Rather than reinforcing existing modes of surveillance, McCarthy writes that AUTO  “repositions the participants in the role of AI, offering a human view into the processes at play, while emphasising their own agency in decision making.” On Münsterhof, this shift moved out of abstraction and into a concrete, shared experience.

Groups signed up for 30-minute test rides and were guided through a short onboarding video before following taped lines across the square to the vehicle. Inside, the bus remained still. Instead of driving, ambient tones played and words appeared on a screen for the group to sing in real time. Participants received prompts to adjust the vehicle, interact with one another and consider ideas of control, acceleration, progress and trust. As McCarthy notes, “Passengers learn what they’re saying just as it comes out of their mouths.” What appears to be a driverless ride becomes a collective system in which the group provides the movement — shifting position from passenger to engine, from user to algorithm, briefly inhabiting the logic of automation itself.

Placing an automated shuttle in the middle of a public square highlights another tension: what kinds of vehicles do we invest in and train? Which routes and rhythms are we designing into the future? Who gets clean air, time, safety and access, and who must adapt to systems built for someone else?

“AUTO  becomes a model of an autonomous system developed by the people using it,” McCarthy writes — a thought that aligned closely with HEK’s interest in technologies shaped with, rather than for, the people. Singing together is intimate and familiar, recalling everything from protest chants to karaoke. In AUTO,  this simple act became a grounding counterpoint to the automated script, drawing attention to presence and connection within a system of instructions.

At a moment when so many tools act on our behalf, AUTO  recenters voice and attention. The PostBus did not move, but the shared experience did — reminding us what it feels like to be together inside a system we are usually asked to trust without seeing.

Credits:

AUTO Münsterhof, Lauren Lee McCarthy, 2025
Commissioned by Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (KiöR)
Curated by Sabine Himmelsbach, Haus der Elektronischen Künste
Photography: Peter Baracchi