If you like GDPR training, you’re in for a treat at the Serpentine. Tech experimenters Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s series of mediaeval church altars and choral compositions is actually a deep dive into the intricacies and legal frameworks of AI modelling. The quasi-historical approach helps to make you feel safe in the uncomfortable, scary waters of new technology.
An organ made of computer cooling fans heralds your entry into the space, it whirrs and hums out melodies composed by the artists. Its structure is adorned with gold curlicues, flower motifs and an engraving of some holy baby as if it’s a relic from an impossible church that’s both of the past and the future.
Then a choir of voices starts echoing through the space, but these voices are not real: they’re generated. Herndon and Dryhurst created a dataset by recording English choirs singing hymns they’d composed, and then prompted an AI model to make new music out of the information. The sound of the human choir is played in one of the rooms, echoing out of another ecclesiastical, sombre, church-like structure in silver and gold, mixing with its AI progeny as both sets of sounds echo through the galleries.
A final room allows you to sing and have an AI choir respond. It’s the only bit that doesn’t quite work, sounding more like a cheap harmoniser pedal than the sonic tech of the new millennium.
It’s presented like the early stages of some new cult
All the solemn mediaeval aesthetics here are a bit ostentatious and cheesy, but they serve a purpose. Herndon and Dryhurst are rooting the work in the distant past to give it the illusion of history, of having roots in the real, because otherwise AI might feel too new, intimidating, terrifying.
That being said, these choral compositions are sonically gorgeous. But is the AI output more ‘beautiful’ or interesting or better than the choir recordings? Is the distinction important? Not really. So the question is…why does this matter? What’s the point? Or is it just some artists saying ‘hey, we made an AI choir, isn’t that neat? Aren’t we smart?’
The answer is awkwardly but necessarily dull. Herndon and Dryhurst are asking viewers to learn about AI training processes, to understand what data is and who it belongs to. If a company can use your data – your photos or writing or videos – they can exploit it, create from it, profit out of it. They’re asking you to consider who will have rights over your data now that we stand on the cusp of what might be the biggest technological change of our lifetimes.
And the thing is, learning about the legal frameworks of AI and its potential future misuses here is like having to sit through GDPR training. It’s painfully dry.
And they know that, I think, which is why it’s presented like the early stages of some new cult, asking you to worship at an altar and buy into a new path towards digital, technological enlightenment. Asking you, us all, to come together.
The call of the title is a call to collectivise, to unite and take control, to imagine a utopian future that’s as safe, welcoming and natural as a choir, singing together as one.
