Holly Herndon

Few have been as successful in interweaving electronic club sounds, experimental music, and critical reflection as Holly Herndon. For her, the computer is a hyper-emotional instrument, not least because of its ubiquitous presence in our everyday lives. Central to Herndon's practice is an exploration of the manifold aspects of the increasingly intimate and simultaneously problematic relationship between man and machine. Via music, Herndon reflects on her own use of computers and an increasingly close, almost intimate, relationship to digital technologies. In her pieces, she tries to make tangible the dilemma presented by our permanent connection to digital data infrastructures: the exponential multiplication of human possibilities for communication, knowledge acquisition, creativity, and publicity also means long-term surveillance that feeds into neo-feudalist power, monopolies, and the pre-formatting of independent will.