Embedding Study 1 & 2 (from the xhairymutantx series)

HOLLY HERNDON (B. 1980) AND MAT DRYHURST (B. 1984)
Embedding Study 1 & 2 (from the xhairymutantx series)

(i)
thermal dye diffusion transfer prints
each: 47 3/4 × 71 5/8 in. (119 × 180 cm.) (2)
Executed in 2024, this work is number one from an edition of three plus two artist proofs.

(ii)
Embedding Study #1
smart contract: 0x68f39af5B75Ae62F5eeAf767D52d6d4843B26fE6
token ID: 1
wallet: 0x5308545D3CA57D051E1cFa56e9E1a330c2933d79
PNG
1,772 x 2,660 pixels
Executed in 2024 and minted on 5 February 2025. This work is unique and accompanied by a non-fungible token.

(iii)
Embedding Study #2
smart contract: 0x68f39af5B75Ae62F5eeAf767D52d6d4843B26fE6
token ID: 2
wallet: 0x5308545D3CA57D051E1cFa56e9E1a330c2933d79
PNG
1,418 x 2,126 pixels
Executed in 2024 and minted on 5 February 2025. This work is unique and accompanied by a non-fungible token.

The artists

New York, Whitney Museum, Whitney Biennial 2024, March-August 2024

The artists play with the idea of using the Museum’s heft to influence the parameters of AI models, and to raise questions about the extent of self-determination possible with the internet today.

Commissioned for the 2024 Whitney Biennial, artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s xhairymutantx focuses on training data behind artificial intelligence (AI) models, opening new possibilities for its use. “Holly Herndon” is not just a person. The name also designates a distinctive internet presence: a female character with white skin, red hair, blunt-cut side bangs, and bright blue eyes. Herndon has become well known in the music and digital art worlds, to the point where when someone types the words “Holly Herndon” into a text-to-image AI program like Dall·E, Midjourney, or Stable Diffusion, the prompts generate an image with some of the characteristics of Holly Herndon, the character.

The artists trained a text-to-image AI model on images of Holly that have been altered through costuming that distorts the artist’s body, and exaggerates her most noted feature, her hair, to transform her identity within AI models. No matter what text prompt is entered by the user, the results will generate a strange version of Holly. The new images are stored in the project gallery, thereby entering the internet at large and potentially becoming part of the data set behind new AI-generated images. Since AI programs view institutional websites like whitney.org as trusted sources, the artists play with the idea of using the Museum’s heft to influence the parameters of AI models, and to raise questions about the extent of self-determination possible with the internet today.