Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst
Play from Memory #26
Video, 2024
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About the artwork
Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s Play from Memory (2024) is a series of machine-generated works informed by Gunild Keetman and Carl Orff’s Schulwerk, a set of music education methods and “imitation games” for children developed in the 1920s. Orff and Keetman hoped to teach children to improvise freely from memory, training them with instructions in the form of text prompts, mnemonic games, and graphic symbols. Herndon and Dryhurst created sixteen new machine learning models that produce fantastical orchestral / choral sounds and imagery of imaginary instruments, performances, and lessons. Play from Memory highlights striking similarities between the ways in which Orff and Keetman aspired for children to learn music, and how we train machines to learn music today.
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.