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Digital Musics & Sound Art Anerkennung - Honorary Mention 2025

The Call

Holly Herndon and Mathew Dryhurst

Berlin-based artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst approach artificial intelligence (AI) as a creative instrument. They view the development of present-day AI models as the latest in a series of coordination technologies that allow individuals to work and build collectively. For millennia, choral and group singing have served a similar purpose of creating meaning in social and civic life. Evolving through rituals and protocols like call and response, they have helped to build spaces and structures for gathering, processing, and 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 and explores what new rituals and protocols we might want to nurture for the age of AI. 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 were part of a Data Trust experiment, led by Serpentine’s Arts Technologies team, to test new approaches to governing AI training data through a real-world case study with 15 UK choirs. The experiment led to a new proposal for data intermediation that allows for the distribution of power between the contributors to training data and those who use the models. This research was published in a recent white paper: Prototyping a GLAM Trusted Data Intermediary for Public Interest AI. 

The immersive and interactive spatial audio installation uses the created models to activate the chapel-like setting of Serpentine North and invites visitors to take part in the Data Trust Experiment with their own voice. A year’s worth of new protocols and collectively created materials for training AI are presented as new artifacts 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. 



Links: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/holly-herndon-matdryhurst-the-call/

Artists: Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst 
Architectural design: SUB
Curatorial lead: Eva Jaeger
Audio assistant: Ian Berman 

Choral AI:
Machine learning development (HymnAI) for songbook by Algomus, University of Lille
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)
 

With support from: Serpentine extended funding network, Berlin Artistic Research Grant, Fellowship, 1of1 

Holly Herndon (US) and Mat Dryhurst (US) are artists renowned for their pioneering work in machine learning, software, and music. They develop their own technology and systems for living with the technology of others, often with a focus on the ownership and augmentation of digital identity and voice. These technical protocols not only facilitate expansive artworks across media, but are proposed as artworks unto themselves. In 2024 they were awarded Austria’s first Digital Human Rights Award, presented the solo exhibition The Call at Serpentine Gallery, and took part in the Whitney Biennial. 

The Call successfully merges multiple state-of-the-art AI models with the cultural heritage of music (choral folk music), creating a distinctive and original artistic work. It stands out not only for its innovative use of technology but also for its engagement with pressing societal issues such as copyright and intellectual property in the context of AI. By bringing together diverse communities (fifteen choirs around UK), the project highlights the collaborative potential of AI in the context of the arts, societies, and communities. The Call demonstrates how contemporary artistic practices can critically reflect on the evolving relationship between cultural heritage, society, and emerging technologies.