Holly Herndon is a composer, performer and academic. She makes experimental electronic music that touches upon issues of surveillance, our embodied existence in digital spaces and the intimate relationships we have developed with machines that allow access to these spaces. Herndon’s synthesis of theory and practice are hugely informative to my own work. Though I may work in a different discipline, her latest album Platform is of relevance in its ability to spark dialogue without being overt in its language. It hints at the ideas contained therein, but leaves a veil of ambiguity that shifts with every listen.
Holly Herndon has been developing a practice that brings a conceptual approach to music-making. As she explains in her talk at Ableton’s Loop, ‘A Summit for Music Makers,’ in Berlin last year, her “holy grail“ is the ability to enmesh a conceptual framework with the process of making of a piece of work, and to have traces of this reflected in its final iteration, without losing the visceral experience of hearing the music and responding to it in itself (Ableton). Her practice sits at the cross-roads of the worlds of electronic music and academia. She started playing at clubs as part of the electronic music scene, having spent five years immersed in Berlin’s club culture (Kretowicz). Herndon is also completing a PhD in composition at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music (CCRMA). It seems that her academic background has only strengthened her career as both composer and performer. She is opening for Radiohead on their current UK and European tour, and frequently tours as a musician, but appears to be equally as comfortable interviewing Chelsea Manning alongside her partner Mat Dryhurst, radical designers Metahaven and hacker and activist Jacob Appelbaum for Paper Magazine, or exhibiting her work in an art gallery.
Herndon’s second full length album Platform fuses samples taken from her own voice with sounds made on her laptop. On ‘Chorus,’ she enacts banal web based activities, such at talking on Skype or watching YouTube videos. Environmental sounds produced by her body interacting with her physical environment, cyberspace, and the interface of the laptop are woven together into multi-layered tracks of syncopating synths and jarring, sliced up word fragments. Herndon embodies these ideas in the making process. She heavily utilises Max/MSP to programme custom patches that allow her to weave together these stands into the textural complexity of her music. The music video for ‘Chorus’ is collaboration between Mat Dryhurst and artist Akihiko Taniguchi. It mixes Skype footage of a glitchy Holly with pans of Taniguchi’s desktop with the video-in-progress on screen, creating a multi-layered environment of surveillance. The footage was filmed using Microsoft’s now defunct Photosynth App that turns photographs into 3D environments (Ableton). The resulting visuals are patchy and warped, reflecting the messy, shallow experience of multi-window, multi-tasking browsing, when attention is spread thin and information from different programmes begins to melt together.
Herndon extensively uses her voice as an instrument. She shifts from soft, ethereal breaths to expanding choral highs, or into the acapella-like sequences on ‘Locker Leak.’ Lyrics are present on a handful of tracks. In ‘Home,’ she voices her anxieties about online surveillance, speaking directly to an imagined NSA spy watching her every move online (Ableton). This disconcerting notion is no longer a symptom of paranoia, but a feasible reality. In her interview at the Loop summit, Herndon explains that she paralleled this feeling of discomfort throughout the process of making the track: she used her most unprocessed vocals yet, included pieces of intimate recordings of herself, produced without her knowledge, and confronted her reluctance to lip-sync in the music video. These detailed considerations culminate in a holistic piece of work, where every part stays true to its overall conceptual underpinning. The accompanying video is by Metahaven, who also designed the cover for Platform. They imposed a running grid of logos taken from secret NSA programmes, upon the video footage obscuring the singer and adding to the feeling of being overwhelmed and powerless, up against a massive institution of control.
‘Lonely at the Top’ is a unique track that stands apart from the rest. Here Herndon collaborates with ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) enthusiast and developer Claire Tolan. ASMR is categorised by a physically felt tingling sensation induced by certain sounds and visuals. A strong ASMR online community has formed on YouTube and elsewhere, with videos of ASMR practitioners whispering, making tapping sounds and virtually massaging their viewers to a state of relaxation (Barratt and Davis). Herndon’s version is speaking to someone who is clearly in a position of power and responsibility, perhaps a CEO or a politician. A gentle voice soothes the assumed patient, reassuring them that they are needed and important, they deserve this, they’ve earned it. Paradoxically, the sounds of relaxation are derived from rustling paper and tapping keyboard keys, probably the same tools that caused the patient’s stress in the first place. ‘Lonely At The Top’ co-opts relaxation techniques to have a conversation about corporate culture and personal mantras we repeat to ourselves, trying to fend off the feelings of not being good enough, productive enough, clever enough. The experience of listening to this track has a somewhat disembodying effect. It transports the listener to another place and into a different persona, while eliciting physical responses in their own body to the musician’s vocals. The ability to communicate across the digital space and create such intimacy with a stranger is demonstrative of the possibilities of digital tools yet to be explored.
Herndon discusses political ideas in her practice without becoming didactic. She strikes a balance between the larger conceptual framework, the process and the outcome. The original idea transpires in every detail of her work, from the source of the sounds, to the processes that transform them, to the videos, and album cover art. Herndon is a musician, first and foremost. And, without suffocating the music with lyrics laden with righteous sentiment, she proposes new ways of looking at our relationships with the digital spaces we inhabit daily. It seems that, in Platform, she has found the “holy grail” of balance she was searching for.
Works Cited
Ableton. “Loop | Herndon On Process.” Online video. YouTube. YouTube, 25 Feb 2016. Web. 21 May 2016.
Barratt, Emma L., and Nick J. Davis. “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR): A Flow-like Mental State.” PeerJ 3 (2015): n. pag. PubMed Central. Web. 21 May 2016.
Herndon, Holly. Chorus. Dir. Arkihiko Taniguchi. RVNG. Intl. YouTube. YouTube, 21 Jan 2014. Web. 21 May 2016.
—. Home. Dir. Metahaven. RVNG. Intl. YouTube. YouTube, 16 Sept. 2014. Web. 21 May 2016.
—. “Locker Leak.” Platform. 4D, 2015. Spotify.
—. “Lonely At The Top.” Platform. 4D, 2015. Spotify.
Kretowicz, Steph. “Computer Love: An Interview With Holly Herndon.” Red Bull Music Academy Daily. Red Bull Music Academy, 14 Nov 2012. Web. 21 May 2016.
Manning, Chelsea. Interviewed by Holy Herndon, Mat Dryhurst, Metahaven and Jacob Applebaum, . ““We are at the Beginning of a New Epoch:” Chelsea Manning on the Luxury of Privacy.” Paper Magazine. Paper Magazine, 9 Jan 2015. Web. 21 May 2016.
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