A collaboration between artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, and Serpentine Arts Technologies, The Call proposes new cultural, legal, and technical rituals for art in the age of AI.
“If all media is training data, including art, let’s turn the production of training data into art instead.”
– Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst
Berlin-based artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst approach AI as a coordination and communication technology, much like singing has been for millennia. Historically, singing techniques like call and response have been rituals for communication, leading us to build spaces and structures for gathering, processing, transmitting information, and creating meaning in social and civic life. Like a choir, where many individual voices become a collective, the artists propose that AI can further augment the transformation from the individual to the collective.
The Call centres on developing new protocols and materials for the creation of choral AI models. To train the AI, Herndon and Dryhurst have composed a songbook of hymnals, singing exercises and a recording protocol, travelling with the Serpentine Arts Technologies team to record fifteen community choirs across the UK. The choristers are now part of a Data Trust experiment that allows for the distribution of power between the contributors to the training data and those who use the models.
The immersive and interactive spatial audio installation uses the created models to activate the chapel-like setting of Serpentine North. A year’s worth of new protocols and collectively created materials for training AI are presented as new artefacts for gathering and ritual, co-designed by architecture studio, sub. The work offers us renewed insight into the networked and collective nature of human creation in the 21st century.
Artist bios
Known for their pioneering work in music, machine learning, and ‘protocol development,’ Berlin-based artists Holly Herndon (US) and Mat Dryhurst’s (UK) expansive practice has led to precedent-setting projects where the technical systems that underwrite creative output are artworks unto themselves. Holly+ (2021), an AI clone of Herndon’s voice which can be used by anyone, has acted as a counter narrative to AI extractivism, offering artists a way forward in the wake of generative AI. Herndon and Dryhurst’s critically acclaimed musical works including Platform (2015) and PROTO (2019), released through 4AD, have toured major venues like Barbican, London and Volkbühne, Berlin. Their image making practice including NFT series Infinite Images (2021/22) and Classified (2021) were among the earliest experiments with embeddings in foundational image models. Herndon and Dryhust most recently exhibited at the 2024 Whitney Biennial, presenting xHairyMutantx (2024), an interactive text-to-image model.
Since 2021, Herndon and Dryhurst have hosted the Interdependence podcast where they share their ongoing conversations with a network of artists and technologists working with music, AI and crypto. In 2022, the duo co-founded Spawning, an organisation building a consent layer for AI, including tools for artists such as haveibeentrained.com, Kudurru and Source.Plus. This year Herndon and Dryhust were named ‘100 most influential voices in AI’ by TIME Magazine and received the first-ever Digital Human Rights Award from the Austrian Foreign Minister for their work on data empowerment. They have been included in ArtReview’s Power 100 list since 2021.
Holly Herndon is a fellow at Berlin Artistic Research Programme 2024/25.
sub is the architecture office that led on the design of the exhibited artworks in close collaboration with the artists. sub was founded by Niklas Bildstein Zaar and Andrea Faraguna in 2017. Based in Berlin, sub practices design through a synthesis of image, research, technology, and architecture. Clients––from the fields of art, fashion, music and commerce––are partners in an ongoing exploration of contemporary rituals. sub’s outputs emerge from copious research in fields spanning humanities, technology and advanced fabrication techniques. With their globally located projects, sub has introduced a worldbuilding language that turns sociocultural dynamics into sensually dissonant environments.
Serpentine’s Arts Technologies programme explores the impact of technology through art, research and experimental projects. It supports artists to produce projects that use advanced technologies. The team brings together people working in art, technology, law, policy, and academia to share knowledge and develop new ideas about technology and society. Areas of focus include blockchain, artificial intelligence, video games, and life sciences.
About & Credits
The Call is an exhibition and R&D project curated and led by Eva Jäger, Arts Technologies Curator and Creative AI Lead, with Ruth Waters, Arts Technologies Producer
Assistant curators: Liz Stumpf, Assistant Exhibitions Curator, and Vi Trinh, Assistant Arts Technologies Curator
Research and development by Serpentine Arts Technologies (led by Kay Watson, Head of Arts Technologies) and the Future Art Ecosystems initiative (led by Victoria Ivanova, R&D Strategic Lead)
Exhibition production by Richard Install, Head of Production and Zsuzsa Benke, Production Manager
Exhibition artwork co-design by sub, led by Niklas Bildstein Zaar with Christopher Blohm, Digital Director
Exhibition artwork fabrication by The White Wall Company
Artwork technical support by Andrew Roberts
Sound Installation and Soundscape Programming by Southby Productions
Music technology by d&b Soundscape
Choral AI dataset production by Ruth Waters with Vi Trinh and Isobel Peyton-Jones
Artistic Research commissioned by Berlin Artistic Research Programme
Musical research by Marko Weßnigk
Songbook arrangement by Evelyn Saylor, Composer’s Assistant
Machine learning development (HymnAI) for songbook by Algomus, University of Lille
Songbook designed by Michael Oswell with Kees de Klein, Music typesetting by Udi Perlman
Scientific collaboration on choral AI models (Choral Diffusion) by Ircam-STMS Sound Analysis and Synthesis team (Nils Demerlé, Matéo Fayet, Robin Meier, and Philippe Esling)
Machine learning support from Stability AI research team (Zach Evans and CJ Carr)
Choral recording by Ben Metsers
Data management by Tommie Introna
Choral data post-production by Ian Berman
Live sound engineering by Carlos Boix
Blackburn People’s Choir, Blackburn
Carnoustie Choir, Carnoustie
Cunninghame Choir, Beith
The Fitzhardinge Consort, Bristol
The Fourth Choir, London
HIVE Choir, Belfast
Leeds Vocal Movement, Leeds
London Contemporary Voices, London
Musarc, London
New London Chamber Choir, London
Open Arts Community Choir, Belfast
Ordsall Acappella Singers, Salford
The Ravenswood Singers, Newcastle
South Lakes A Cappella, Windermere
Spectrum Singers, Penarth
Data Trust Experiment led by Victoria Ivanova, Jennifer Ding (Data Intermediary), and Eva Jäger with Ruth Waters and Mercedes Bunz. Incubated by the Future Art Ecosystems project at Serpentine Arts Technologies. Further research support for data empowerment by the Centre for Data Futures at King’s College London and RadicalxChange. Legal counsel for data empowerment of choir members by AWO and Keystone Law.
