Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst · Oct 4, 2024
Making the training data can itself be art
Markdown · JSON · Original source
Herndon and Dryhurst propose treating AI training as a collective creative act. In The Call, the gathering of voices, recording rules and shared governance become part of the artwork, alongside the sounds a model produces.
Headline and sourced paraphrase by Escape Meridian. Inclusion is not endorsement.
Original source
Serpentine Galleries · Artist statement and exhibition record
Original source date: Oct 4, 2024 (2024-10-04).
Date basis: Exhibition opening date; an exact page-publication date is not supplied.
Original publisher text read on 2026-09-22; a short editorial paraphrase is stored, not the underlying work.
The date this reading was added to Escape Meridian is not recorded.
Limits
A particular commissioned artwork and governance experiment; broad adoption and long-term distributional effects remain unestablished.
Editorial test, not a stated concession
Ask contributors what decisions they could actually influence and whether the arrangement continues to work after the exhibition; token participation would weaken the collective-governance claim.
supports
The project records fifteen UK community choirs and describes a Data Trust experiment for sharing power between contributors and model users.
Source and contributor context
Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst · Artists behind The Call
Created musical works and AI voice projects, including Holly+ and PROTO.
Their practice demonstrates an artistic possibility; it does not prove a universal ownership or compensation model.
Declared interests are limited to the records linked here; absence of a record does not establish absence of an interest.
Assumptions
Editorial reconstruction: contributors can meaningfully participate in decisions about their shared material.
Editorial reconstruction: artistic value can reside in a process and its relationships, as well as an output.
Source media
Media retrieval status: found.
Questions between perspectives
Editorial comparison; no direct exchange established: What obligations arise when people contribute the material an AI system depends on?
Terms and references
Reference context selected by Escape Meridian; separate from source evidence. Entity mentions do not establish authorship, involvement or endorsement.
Holly Herndon
Holly Herndon is an artist and musician whose work explores voice, AI and collective creation.
Mat Dryhurst
Mat Dryhurst is an artist whose collaborations with Holly Herndon examine AI, cultural ownership and collective creation.
Serpentine
Serpentine is an arts organization whose technology program commissions work investigating how emerging systems shape culture.
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