Holly Herndon

Holly Herndon (born 1980) is an American artist and composer based in Berlin, Germany. After studying composition at Stanford University she pursued a music career internationally. Herndon's music often includes human singing voices (including her own), is primarily computer-based, and regularly uses the visual programming language Max/MSP to create custom instruments and vocal processes. She has released music on the labels RVNG Intl. and 4AD. Her third full-length album, Proto, was released on May 10, 2019.

In addition to her solo work, Herndon has been involved in numerous artistic collaborations, including projects with Iranian writer Reza Negarestani, Chicago-based producer Jlin and Dutch design studio Metahaven. Herndon and Dryhurst are notable for their work exploring the possibilities of creating content using technologies such as AI, Web 3.0, and blockchain.

Biography

Early life and education Holly Herndon was born in 1980 and raised in Johnson City, Tennessee.

Movement (2012) While attending Mills she began developing her debut album Movement. with a video directed by Dutch design studio Metahaven. According to Herndon, it captures her feeling of losing trust in electronics after the revelations the NSA monitors what some Americans do online. "Home" continues "Chorus"'s theme of surveillance: "It is a love song for prying eyes (an agent / a critic), and also a break up song with the devices with which I shared a naive relationship." and includes a track titled "Lonely at the Top" that is intended to trigger Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR). Addressing themes of internet decentralization by actively exploring the concept of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), Platform was created through the Internet in collaboration between Dryhurst and Herndon and strangers from all over the world.

Recruit (2015) In 2015, Dryhurst and Herndon released an eleven minute long track called "Recruit", which they made for British menswear line Cottweiler. The artwork merges outdoor soundscapes alongside Herndon's treated vocal samples. This collaborative work with Dryhurst and programmer Jules LaPlace involved a singing AI named Spawn, which they developed over the course of several years. Spawn is an artificial neural network that is trained to recognize and replicate human voices. They also trained Spawn to learn diverse vocal types by having it listen to the singing voices of others. While making Proto, they held "training ceremonies" which are live performances where participants sing to Spawn.

Holly+ (2021) In 2021, Dryhurst and Herndon developed Holly+, a protocol that addresses concerns associated with deepfakes and distributed "identity play." Holly+ is a method to decentralize Herndon's own identity, which enables a community of stewards to determine whether new media created with her voice should be co-sold in collaboration with Holly herself. Holly+ was also presented at TED2022: A New Era in April 2022 with Pher. In November 2022, Holly+ performed a cover version of Dolly Parton's "Jolene". A modified score of the original song composed of new tonal harmonies was fed to Holly+ and then generated in Herndon's voice. Dryhurst and Herndon won the 2022 Ars Electronica STARTS prize for digital art for Holly+. Some of these songs were sold on as NFTs on the Zora platform.

Touring and exhibitions Herndon has toured throughout Europe and the United States. She played the CTM Festival

In May 2016, Herndon played seven shows with Radiohead in Amsterdam, Paris and London. She was joined on stage by Mat Dryhurst and Colin Self.

Herndon's first foray into exhibiting her own visual art installations in an art gallery was in 2015, at Hamburg's Kunstverein space. The project was commissioned by ZKM Center for Art and Media's Sound Dome. The exhibition, titled Everywhere and Nowhere, featured a combination of a 23.2-channel sound installation and related video works, as well as live performances by dancer and choreographer Jone San Martin, Jiu Jitsu fighter Sam Forsythe, and artist Brian Rogers.

Spawning Herndon being awarded an Art Prize for Digital Human Rights in 2024 by Alexander Schallenberg, foreign minister of Austria. In 2022, Dryhurst and Herndon, along with Jordan Meyer and Patrick Hoepner launched Spawning. They coined the term "spawning" to describe generating media from a training set using machine learning. Spawning enables artists to consciously opt in or out of the datasets which AI art generators use to train and create compositions. They set up a website called haveibeentrained.com, where artists can search the nearly 5.8 billion images in the Laion-5b dataset that is used to train AI art models Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. Spawning's approach has been cited as being instructive towards guiding the European Union's policy on text and data mining.

In 2023, Spawning launched Source.plus, "a tool to search and curate image collections into individually tailored training datasets." As of 2026, the site is no longer available and the domain for sale.

Teaching Herndon has taught, lecturered, and performed workshops at conferences, festivals, academies, and mentorship programs, such as Forecast in Berlin.

Discography

Studio albums +

Released: 2011 Label: Independent Format: Cassette, digital

Released: November 13, 2012 Label: RVNG Intl. Format: 12" vinyl, Digital

Released: January 21, 2014 "Jolene" (2022)