Mathew Dryhurst is an artist renowned for his pioneering work in machine learning and governance. He runs Herndon Dryhurst Studio with his partner Holly Herndon, with whom he has co-produced critically acclaimed albums including Platform (4AD/RVNG 2015) and PROTO (4AD/ 2019), and developed Holly+, a protocol for shared ownership and licensing of an artist's identity and intellectual property.
In 2022 they co-founded Spawning, an organization that attempted to build a web-scale data permissions protocol for AI. Its tools Have I Been Trained and the Do Not Train standard proved influential in machine learning policy discussion.
Dryhurst's practice operates at the intersection of art, technology, and infrastructure. He describes their work as Protocol Art: work that intervenes at the level of systems and protocols rather than objects, arguing for agency at the infrastructure layer.
His work has been exhibited internationally at major institutions including the Serpentine Galleries, London; the Whitney Biennial, New York; and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. In 2024 they published "All Media is Training Data" (König Books), a retrospective of their career and a position statement on the future of AI and art. In 2026, he presents Strange Rules at Palazzo Diedo in Venice, a major exhibition co-conceived with Holly Herndon and Hans Ulrich Obrist, presented by Berggruen Arts & Culture.
Dryhurst has held faculty positions at NYU and the European Graduate School. He is a widely consulted voice on AI policy, copyright, and the political economy of cultural production, contributing to debates around data rights and the governance of generative AI.
He is based in Berlin.
Photo Credit: Diana Pfammatter
Further information:
https://herndondryhurst.studio
https://proto.co.ls
