Pardon our dust, we’re working on a new installation that affects the Atrium, 3rd, 4th and 5th Floor.
This program has tiered pricing. Please select the option that works for you:
$0 — Free RSVP
$10 — General
$20 — Extra Support
$30 — Pay It Forward
Listen in as three longtime colleagues, collaborators, and friends continue an ongoing conversation, probing the big ideas on their minds as artists and curators reshape their field in dialogue with technology.
Earlier this year, multidisciplinary artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, together with curator and art historian Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-curated Strange Rules at Palazzo Diedo in Venice. The show explored the idea of protocol art — art that doesn’t just use today’s technologies but pulls back the curtain on them. The usually invisible systems that shape how culture gets made and seen — AI, algorithms, apps, and beyond — become the artistic material itself. In protocol art, the artwork stops being a fixed object and becomes something closer to a living process that is built on instructions and open to collaboration, including collaboration with the viewer and with machines.
In this wide-ranging conversation, the three explore what various technologies make possible, why artists need power over the systems they work within, and where these questions might lead next. Herndon and Dryhurst bring the perspective of artists whose work consistently pushes into new territory, uncovering the potential of where technology can take us all while staying grounded in questions of who holds control and what it means for culture at large. Obrist, drawing on his deep immersion in contemporary art, brings the perspective of a historian and curator, asking what it means to make art not just with new tools, but out of the rules themselves and how this moment will shape what comes next.
Berlin-based artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst are known for their pioneering work in music, machine learning, and protocol development. Their expansive practice has led to precedent-setting projects where the technical systems that underwrite creative output are artworks unto themselves. Herndon and Dryhurst’s critically acclaimed musical works, including Platform (2015) and PROTO (2019), released through 4AD, have toured major venues like Barbican, London, and Volksbühne, Berlin. In 2024, they presented the solo exhibition The Call at Serpentine Gallery in London and were part of the Whitney Biennial presenting xhairymutantx (2024), an interactive text-to-image model designed to poison Holly’s public image. In 2022, the duo co-founded Spawning, an organization building a consent layer for AI, including tools for artists. They were awarded the 2022 Ars Electronica STARTS prize for digital art, Austria’s first Digital Human Rights Award in 2024, and the Kairos Prize in 2025.
Hans Ulrich Obrist is artistic director of Serpentine in London, advisor to California Academy of Studio Arts (CASA), and senior advisor at LUMA Arles. Since his first exhibition, World Soup (The Kitchen Show), in 1991, he has curated more than 350 shows. Notable examples include the Do It series; Take Me (I’m Yours) in London, Paris, New York, and Milan; and the Swiss Pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Biennale in Venice. He has also co-curated Cities on the Move, Il Tempo del Postino in Manchester and Basel, and the 11–15 Rooms series. Recent exhibitions include Enzo Mari at Triennale Milano and WORLDBUILDING at Centre Pompidou-Metz and Julia Stoschek Collection Düsseldorf. Since 2013, his Handwriting Project has protested the disappearance of handwriting in the digital age on Instagram (@hansulrichobrist). Obrist received the inaugural World Around Global Visionary Award (2026); recent books include A Life in Progress (2025).
Villa Albertine crafts programs aimed at making French language and culture accessible to US audiences and build partnerships between French and American higher education institutions. We provide customized exploratory residencies across the US for global creators and thinkers. We also offer incubators and grants for French and American culture professionals; public events across creative disciplines; and a print magazine and podcast. Villa Albertine’s credo is that artists can contribute key insights to address society’s pressing questions, and that collaborating across borders deepens those insights.
Accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and assisted-listening devices are available upon request ten business days in advance.
Please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org, and we will do our best to fulfill your request.
Support for Public Programs and Artist Talks at SFMOMA is provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Distinguished Lecture Series.