Holly Herndon: Protocol

Free and open to the public. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis

Berlin-based artist Holly Herndon is known for her pioneering work in music, machine learning, and protocol development. Her practice creates precedent-setting projects where technical systems are artworks unto themselves.

Herndon co-runs a studio in Berlin with her partner Mathew Dryhurst. Their major exhibitions include The Call at Serpentine Gallery in London, Starmirror at Kunstwerke Berlin and K21 in Duesseldorf, xhairymutantx in the 2024 Whitney Biennial, and Strange Rules at Palazzo Diedo in Venice. They released the book All Media is Training Data in 2024 through Buchhandlung Walther König. In 2022, Herndon co-founded Spawning, an organization building an open consent-and-compliance protocol for AI data, creating tools for artists such as haveibeentrained.com and the Do Not Train protocol covering 2 billion+ works.

Herndon’s critically acclaimed musical works include Platform (RVNG-4AD/2015) and PROTO (4AD/2019). Awards include the 2022 Ars Electronica STARTS prize, Austria’s first Digital Human Rights Award (2024), the Kairos Prize (2025), and the Deutschen KI Prize (2025).

Herndon holds a doctorate in Computer Music from Stanford University.

With support from Mary Ellen Coe and Elizabeth Laraki.

Series presenting partners: Detroit PBS, ALL ARTS, and PBS Books. Media partner: Michigan Public.

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