Starmirror by Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst

One of my works of the year and one that crystallizes many of my current thoughts about where art is headed (living protocol stacks that form worlds) is Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s Starmirror at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, which I discussed with the artists here.

The large-scale installation treats AI as a condition of public space rather than a backstage or blackbox tool. Building on The Call, the project reframed choral participation as a live, opt-in data practice: visitors gather, sing and shape a shared model through ritual and repetition. For the Berlin “chapter,” the duo drew from medieval German repertoire and Hildegard von Bingen, using her canon as training material and a prompt for new collective song.

This author spoke to the artists about the work in 2025.