The Quarantine Tapes: A week-day program from Onassis LA and dublab. Hosted by Paul Holdengräber, the series chronicles shifting paradigms in the age of social distancing. Each day, Paul calls a guest for a brief discussion about how they are experiencing the global pandemic.

About episode 119:

On episode 119 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by musician Holly Herndon. Calling in from Berlin, Holly is fascinated by music, the internet, and machine learning. She talks with Paul about how machine learning is changing our understanding of sampling and copyright, emphasizing the need to create a world that prioritizes giving attribution.

As a musician, Holly has been missing live performances in quarantine. She believes that this time has made us realize just how vast the difference is between watching a concert on a screen and going to it in person. In their conversation, Pual and Holly turn repeatedly to their hopes for the future, as they consider how we can imagine alternative fantasies for our relationship to the internet and other technologies of today.

Holly Herndon operates at the edges of electronic and avant-garde pop and emerges with a dynamic and disruptive canon of her own. On her most recent full-length album PROTO, Herndon fronts and conducts an electronic pop choir comprised of both human and A.I. voices over a musical palette that encompasses everything from synths to Sacred Harp stylings. CNN noted that Herndon is “shaping the future of A.I.,” and she has demonstrated this nexus of technological evolution and musical catharsis with elevated performances at The Barbican (London), Volksbühne (Berlin), Sónar (Barcelona), Unsound (Krakow), and Club 2 Club (Milan). The sounds synthesized on PROTO by Herndon, her A.I. “baby” Spawn, and the vocal ensemble combine elements from Herndon’s dynamic and idiosyncratic personal journey: the timeless folk traditions of her childhood experiences in church-going East Tennessee (particularly the prismatic layered practice of Sacred Harp singing), the avant-garde music she explored while at Mills College, and the radical club culture of Berlin, all enhanced by her recent PhD composition studies at Stanford University, researching machine learning and music.

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