Talk

Holly Herndon is a composer, musician, and sound artist based in Berlin. Herndon received her MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College, Oakland, California and PhD in composition from Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. Her music is primarily computer-based and often uses visual programming languages Max/MSP, with which she creates custom instruments and vocal processes as in her first full-length LP Movement (2012, RVNG, intl.). Herndon lost trust in electronics after the publicising of NSA monitoring of Americans’ online behaviour, filtering into her follow-up Platform (2014, RVNG, Intl.) for which Dutch design studio Metahaven directed a video. Her most recent full-length album introduces an AI ‘baby’ that produces responses to audio material in PROTO (2019, 4AD).

Marisa Olson is a New York-based artist, writer, media theorist, and former punk musician. Many of her works question the infrastructure by which power is constructed, performed, and exchanged, particularly in relationship to the cultural history of technology, experiences of gender, and the wellness industry. The voice has always been an important metaphor for her, much as visualizing her hearing-related disability is a frequent undercurrent. She has participated in multiple international biennales and had solo shows or commissions with the Whitney Art Museum, Bard CCS's Hessel Museum of Art, the Samek Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, Western Front, and Vox Populi. She's held leadership roles at Rhizome and SF Camerawork, curated projects and the Guggenheim, SFMOMA, White Columns, and Artists Space, and written about media art and culture for Artforum, Wired, Flash Art, e-flux, Aperture, and numerous books and anthologies.