Serpentine, London
Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst
The Call
Oct 4, 2024 - Feb 4, 2025

Overview
“If all media is training data, including art, let’s turn the production of training data into art instead.“
- Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst
Details
The Call is an innovative exploration of AI’s potential as a collective, communicative, and creative technology. Conceived in collaboration with Serpentine Arts Technologies, the exhibition reimagines artificial intelligence not merely as a technological tool, but as a contemporary extension of ancient traditions of choral singing - rituals that have historically united individual voices into collective expression. Central to the exhibition is the creation of new, collectively sourced vocal datasets, innovative polyphonic AI models, and forward-thinking governance structures. To generate these datasets, the artists composed a dedicated songbook comprising original hymns, singing exercises, and structured recording protocols. Herndon and Dryhurst travelled across the UK to record professional and community choirs, capturing diverse human voices. The choristers became part of a Data Trust experiment, examining new ways of distributing agency and power between those who contribute data and those who utilise the resulting AI models.