What if intelligence has no fixed address? At Palazzo Diedo in Venice, Mat Dryhurst, Holly Herndon, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Adriana Rispoli stage Strange Rules, a six-day case that cognition exceeds its substrate.
Strange Rules opened on 4 May 2026 in the ground-floor nave of Palazzo Diedo, the Venetian palazzo operated by Berggruen Arts and Culture, and ran through 9 May. The project introduced Protocol Art to describe work that does not simply use algorithms, artificial intelligence models, or platform infrastructures as tools but takes them as its subject: exposing, analysing, and transforming the invisible rule systems that shape how culture is produced and perceived. It is less a statement about technology than about where authorship sits when the instructions that generate work are as consequential as the work itself.
@hansulrichobrist@matdryhurst@holly_herndon@sub.global@adrianarispoli_curator@berggruendiedo
Read more at thisispaper.com
As they open a new exhibition at Palazzo Diedo in Venice, Berlin‑based artists Holly Herndon (@holly_herndon ) and Mat Dryhurst (@matdryhurst ) talk to novelist Ned Beauman about asserting agency over technology, Ben Lerner and persuading worms to grow two heads.
Read this conversation in full on Ocula by clicking the link in our bio.
In Spike #87, “Everything’s Computer,” Anika Meier samples five art practitioners who are responding to generative AI by building avatars, ecosystems, and autonomous models – and blowing open the conceit that so much of art’s value should rest on its makers’ signatures.
Get the clout-magnetizing print copy or an instantly downloadable e-paper >>> /products/issue-87-spring-2026-everythings-computer
Images
1. LaTurbo Avedon, Self-Portrait (Fluorescent), 2021
2. Holly Herndon & Matt Dryhurst, xhairtymutantx, 2024
3. Sofia Crespo, Coral, from the series “Artificial Neural History,” 2020–24
4. Jon Rafman, Main Stream Media Network, 2025, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles
#everythingscomputer #postartist
On 4 May 2026, Palazzo Diedo presents “Strange Rules”, a new interdisciplinary project curated by Mat Dryhurst (@matdryhurst ), Holly Herndon (@holly_herndon ) Hans Ulrich Obrist (@hansulrichobrist ) with Adriana Rispoli (@adrianarispoli_curator ).
The exhibition introduces the concept of Protocol Art, a practice that engages with the underlying rules that dictate how culture is produced, distributed and perceived in the digital age. Algorithms, artificial intelligence models, platforms and technological infrastructures are brought into focus not as neutral tools, but as structures that actively shape meaning and experience.
“Strange Rules” shifts attention from the artwork as a fixed object to the artwork as a process, unfolding through instructions, interactions and systems. Across Palazzo Diedo, the project takes the form of a dynamic environment, where installations, performances, screenings and research activities redefine the relationship between art, technology and collective participation.
🏛️ “Strange Rules”, curated by Mat Dryhurst, Holly Herndon, Hans Ulrich Obrist, with Adriana Rispoli
📆 4 May – 22 November 2026
📍 Palazzo Diedo, Venice
#ProtocolArt #BerggruenArt #StrangeRules #berggruendiedo
Mat Dryhurst (@matdryhurst ) is a Berlin-based artist renowned for his pioneering work in machine learning and governance. 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 co-runs Herndon Dryhurst Studio with his partner Holly Herndon, where they’ve developed projects like Holly+, a protocol for shared ownership and licensing of an artist’s identity and intellectual property, and Spawning, a data permissions protocol for AI. His practice, which he calls Protocol Art, intervenes at the level of systems and protocols rather than objects, arguing for agency at the infrastructure layer.
TITLES spoke to Mat about the collapse of traditional cultural frameworks, the rise of protocol-based authorship, and the limits of copyright in an AI-native world.
Read the full interview on Substack at the link in our bio.
In 2022, we did an episode with artist, technologist, and friend-of-the-pod @matdryhurst to discuss a question that now feels almost quaint: Is AI good or bad for art? This was back in the days (pre-ChatGPT) when everybody was freaking out about text-to-image generators like Dall-E and Midjourney, and we discussed what they might mean for working artists. Obviously, a lot has happened since then, so it felt like time to check back in with Mat.
Mat is the rare artist and leftist we know who’s also an outspoken proponent of AI tools, if not the broader economic structures shaping their creation and deployment. While we don’t agree on everything, we share a core perspective: This tech isn’t going away, and artists and creative people need to understand it if they want to have a say in what the future will look like.
Having worked with AI in his practice for over a decade alongside his partner @holly_herndon — they’ve even co-authored a book about AI and cultural production — Mat brings a deeply informed perspective to the ethical implications and creative possibilities of these tools. Given that conversations about AI tend to fall into polarized culture war-style faceoffs, we wanted to dig into the fine print of what’s actually going on, where the AI industry is heading, and where creative workers should be focusing their attention.
Mat talks with us about what running a start-up focused on giving artists more power over their training data taught him about the limits of current copyright debates, and whether slop is as big as a problem for culture as people are making it out to be. We also get into why blanket bans of AI-generated art and music are not only impractical, but bad for artists. Plus, we discuss why Mat thinks open models are critical to creative control in a landscape that is increasingly consolidated around a handful of powerful companies.
Full convo at theculturejournalist dot substack dot com 📡
Just when you think you’ve got #immersivesound all figured out 🤩 This is 'Starmirror' by artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst. In short, a collaborative training ground for humans and AI - a call and response recording studio for all our voices - the results of which will train an AI choir.
You can be part of this. The immersive exhibition is on view in Berlin until 18.01.26. Check out the @kwinstitutefcontemporaryart for details.
📸 Frank Sperling | #soundart #soundartist
