Hutchinson Community College to host futurist, storyteller Taryn Southern for Dillon Lecture Series
Information obtained from Hutchinson Community College Facebook
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — An award-winning storyteller and creative technologist who composed the world's first AI pop album will be the next speaker in Hutchinson Community College's Ray and Stella Dillon Lecture Series.
Taryn Southern is scheduled to speak April 21, 2026, at 10:30 a.m. at the Hutchinson Sports Arena. General admission tickets are $10, and students are admitted free with a school ID.
Southern has spent more than two decades at the intersection of emerging technology and human storytelling. As an early YouTube creator with more than 750 million views, she built a career in brand and story strategy for digital audiences before turning her attention to artificial intelligence and neurotechnology.
Her work in AI includes composing the first AI-generated pop album in 2017 and digitally cloning herself in 2020. She also directed a documentary on brain-computer interfaces that screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. Most recently, Southern served in a marketing and communications leadership role at a neurotechnology company, helping oversee two funding rounds totaling more than $230 million.
The Dillon Lecture Series has brought distinguished speakers to Hutchinson since 1982. The series is guided by the philosophy of Chinese thinker Kuan-Tzu — that learning is the key to enlightenment — and has featured poets, politicians, scientists and American heroes over the decades. Speakers are selected by the Dillon Lecture Committee with the goal of educating and inspiring audiences of all ages.
Lectures are held in the Hutchinson Sports Arena and run approximately one hour.
Tickets are available online at hutchcc.edu/dls or at the Sports Arena on the day of the event. For more information, call 620-665-3505.