Aspen is a place for leaders to lift their sights above the possessions which possess them. To confront their own nature as human beings, to regain control over their own humanity by becoming more self-aware, more self-correcting, and hence more self-fulfilling.

Walter P. Paepcke, Aspen Institute Co-Founder
Holly Herndon

Holly Herndon

Composer, Artist, Herndon Dryhurst Studio; Co-Founder, Spawning AI, Technology Leaders Initiative

Berlin, Germany

Holly Herndon is an artist known for her pioneering work in music, machine learning, and protocol development. Her practice creates precedent-setting projects where technical systems are artworks unto themselves. She co-runs a studio in Berlin, Germany with her partner Mathew Dryhurst. Their major exhibitions include The Call at Serpentine Gallery in London, Starmirror at Kunstwerke Berlin and K21 in Duesseldorf, xhairymutantx in the 2024 Whitney Biennial, and Strange Rules at Palazzo Diedo in Venice. They released the book All Media is Training Data in 2024 through Buchhandlung Walther König.

In 2022, she co-founded Spawning, an organization building a consent layer for AI, creating tools for artists such as haveibeentrained.com and the Do Not Train protocol covering 2 billion+ works. Her critically acclaimed musical works include Platform (RVNG-4AD/2015) and PROTO (4AD/2019). Awards include the 2022 Ars Electronica STARTS prize, Austria’s first Digital Human Rights Award (2024), the Kairos Prize (2025), and the Deutschen KI Prize (2025). Holly holds a doctorate in Computer Music from Stanford University. She is a Fellow of the inaugural class of the Technology Leaders Initiative of the Aspen Institute and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.