Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst
Kinder Scout
Iframe, 2025
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About the artwork
Kinder Scout is a landmark experiment that draws on Ken Stanley's research into novelty search and the ethos of the right-to-roam movement. Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst present a protocol that explores uncharted regions of a diffusion model's latent space in pursuit of truly uncommon images. The artists have trained an expedition team of agents with distinct roles. Some embody their personal aesthetic sensibilities, while others serve as critics, filtering out images that feel too familiar. The work unfolds on a digital canvas that visualizes these agents on their mission, traversing, arguing, and discovering in real time.
What is Novelty Search? Novelty Search is an algorithm developed by Joel Lehman and Kenneth O. Stanley that abandons traditional objective-based optimization in favor of rewarding behavioral novelty. Rather than directly pursuing a specific goal, it explores diverse solutions by prioritizing new and different behaviors. This counterintuitive approach often outperforms traditional methods on problems where chasing the objective leads to dead ends. In the context of Kinder Scout, Novelty Search principles allow the AI agents to discover unique and unexpected images by avoiding the well-trodden paths that lead to familiar aesthetic outcomes.
Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst are Berlin-based artists known for their innovative use of machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and decentralized systems in art and music. Their collaborative practice spans a range of media, from AI-generated performances and installations to protocol development that challenges existing power structures in the digital space.
Their work frequently examines the intersection of human creativity and AI. One of their most prominent projects, Holly+ (2021), is an AI clone of Herndon's voice that can be used by the public, embodying a counter-narrative to AI extractivism and exploring ideas of "vocal sovereignty." This project has been presented at major venues including Sonar Festival and TED.
The duo’s musical work includes critically acclaimed albums Platform (2015) and PROTO (2019), released through 4AD, which have been performed at prestigious venues such as the Barbican in London and Volksbühne in Berlin. Their visual art practice includes groundbreaking NFT series like Infinite Images (2021/22) and the recent exhibition at the 2024 Whitney Biennial, where they showcased xhairymutantx, an AI-driven interactive installation that challenges identity in the age of generative models.
In addition to their artistic output, Herndon and Dryhurst co-founded Spawning, an organization dedicated to building ethical AI tools, and host the Interdependence podcast, which explores the intersections of AI, music, and blockchain technologies. Recognized as some of the most influential voices in AI, they were named in TIME’s 100 Most Influential Voices in AI and awarded the first Digital Human Rights Award by the Austrian government.