Transforming a Song You Hate to a Song you Love
With the work of: Holly Herndon and Matt Dryhurst
Description of the work:
As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in everyday life, questions around ethics if AI and data ownership authorship are more urgent than ever. Artists are uniquely positioned to expose and challenge the hidden structures behind these technologies.
Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst are pioneering AI artists. They approach artificial intelligence as a form of collective intelligence: a creative system shaped by many voices. By turning individual expression into a collaborative endeavour, they are rethinking the role of the artist in the age of AI. In 2021, they launched Holly+, an AI voice model trained on Herndon’s singing voice. It lets anyone create music using her voice, turning it into a shared creative tool. Instead of keeping her voice private, Herndon invites others to explore and remix it. The project is run by a DAO (a kind of online community) where members vote on how the voice can be used, making authorship a shared, collective process.
A project like Holly+ explores how AI models can become open, generative tools rather than fixed outputs. They call this approach of art protocol art: artworks designed as seeds for infinite iterations. In the following assignment, you get to work with Holly+ yourself.
Assignment:
- Choose a song that you really don’t like.
- Write down why you hate this song. Is it because of the lyrics, the melody, the genre or voice. Try to be as specific as possible. If you hate the lyrics, why? Is it the message, the word choice, or pronunciation?
- Identify what aspect of the song you wish were different. Would you like to:
- Change the lyrics to tell a different story?
- Transform the musical style or genre? For example: you want to turn an ambient sound into a pop hit?
- Do you want to replace the singer’s voice or tone?
- And which aspect of the song do you want to keep?
- Using an AI tool of your choice and begin experimenting. Here are some tips of tools that you can use:
- Ask ChatGPT or Claude to help you change the lyrics.
- Use Holly Herndon’s voice by using the Holly+ tool to create a more experimental, artistic or complex version of the song you hate.
- Tools like Suno or Udio can help you create a new melody for the song.
- Generate at least one new version of the song with AI that feels closer to something you love, or at least find more interesting.
- Keep track of your prompts, outputs, iterations, and even failed experiments. There might be hidden gems that turn out to be useful or inspiring during the process.
- Give your song a title. This can be a completely new name, but it can also be a reference to the original in a distorted way.
- Reflect on the transformation. Did your relationship with the original song change? Did AI help you understand your own taste better?