Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst: ‘The Call’
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