Berlin-based artists and technology visionaries Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, with their exhibition “Starmirror” at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, reposition Artificial Intelligence (AI) from a passive consumption tool to a monumental achievement of collective human intelligence. The exhibition transforms KW’s gallery space into a training ground where humans and AI produce useful knowledge together for a shared purpose.
For twenty years, Herndon and Dryhurst have worked with sound and machines. For their groundbreaking album PROTO (2019), they used “Spawn,” an AI vocal model trained in community sessions. “Starmirror” advances this practice:
Infinite Sound Source: At the heart of the exhibition is a new songbook generated by an AI model trained on the 12th-century German cosmologist Hildegard von Bingen’s morality play Ordo Virtutum. This model both honors Bingen’s legacy and produces endless musical variations by adding polyphony.
Collective Participation: On designated Sundays throughout the exhibition, visitors directly join the AI’s training process. During these moments, KW’s hall becomes a recording studio that unites participants’ voices in a “Call and Response” format alongside a choir and international choruses. The resulting data trains a Berlin AI Chorus that will later perform at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen.
Through these works, the artists counter the fear that AI will turn us into passive consumers, instead proposing “active social mediation over social media.” The exhibition also questions the hierarchy of technical protocols with the sculptural Arboretum—based on Public Diffusion, an image model trained entirely on public data. Herndon and Dryhurst’s vision is simple: “AI is us, as a collective whole.”
Exhibition Information
Artists: Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst
Title: Starmirror
Venue: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
Dates: 31 October 2025 – 18 January 2026
Special Event: Thursday, 30 October 2025, 19:00–22:00 (Opening)
Participatory Performance: “Starmirror Training Performance” on designated Sundays during the exhibition, 16:00–17:00.
