PERFECTION / SPECULATION in conversation with Natasha Vita-More at the Vigeland Museum, OsloPhoto Katharina Gellein Viken & Charles Kriel
Adam Peacock is an artist, designer, and researcher exploring how technological systems influence identity, desire, and behaviour across contemporary cultures.
His practice develops designed artefacts and communication tools, exhibitions, cultural programmes, and long-term collaborations with cultural, academic, and commercial organisations.
Recently, his projects have explored the complexities of AI integration within platform culture, reconfiguring existing assumptions by asking how these mechanisms have shaped the present and where they may lead us next.
THE VALIDATION JUNKY at RAM Gallery, Oslo ADAM PEACOCK BIOGRAPHY 2026 – 625 words
Adam Peacock is an artist, designer, and researcher exploring how technological systems influence identity, desire, and behaviour across contemporary cultures. His practice develops designed artefacts and communication tools, exhibitions, cultural programmes, and long-term collaborations with cultural, academic, and commercial organisations. Recently, his projects have explored the complexities of AI integration within platform culture, reconfiguring existing assumptions by asking how these mechanisms have shaped the present and where they may lead us next.
Trained as an architect at the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL, he received an MA in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art, where he developed The Validation Junky (TVJ), a human-centred design research laboratory focused on a hypothetical character saturated with technological mediation. TVJ applies architectural systems methodologies to contemporary bodies, subjectivities, and identities, investigating how platform economies, AI-driven filtering, financialisation and optimisation logics produce new formats of human cultural behaviour.
Trained as an architect at the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL, he received an MA in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art, where he developed The Validation Junky (TVJ), a human-centred design research laboratory focused on a hypothetical character saturated with technological mediation. TVJ applies architectural systems methodologies to contemporary bodies, subjectivities, and identities, investigating how platform economies, AI-driven filtering, financialisation and optimisation logics produce new formats of human cultural behaviour.
Key projects developed under TVJ include Machines for Automating Taste (commissioned by the Visible Futures Lab, School of Visual Arts NYC), which used designed artefacts and graphic illustrations to explore how AI mechanisms synthesise aesthetic sensibilities; GENETICS GYM (commissioned by the Fashion Space Gallery, UAL), which treated the body as a malleable, fashioned interface which explored how media cultures affect subjectivity, and PERFECTION/SPECULATION, a collaboration with PRAKSIS Oslo, the Vigeland Museum, Karmaklubb* and interlocutors from MIT, CUNY and SCI-Arc, creating a hub of conversations around new media, biotechnologies, constructs of beauty and the notion of ‘designing yourself to fit society' instead of ‘desgining society to fit yourself’.
Adam’s work has been exhibited and presented internationally, including with Tecnológico de Monterrey, Trinity College Dublin, Science Gallery Melbourne, Arebyte Gallery London, Product Innovation Apparel Milan, London Fashion Week, FASHIONCLASH Maastricht, and the Royal Scottish Academy Edinburgh. His research has been recognised with awards and honours, including the Lumen Prize, S+T+ARTS at Ars Electronica, and the Robert Garland Treseder Fellowship at the University of Melbourne, and has been featured by the BBC, The Irish Times, Art Guide Australia, and published by Bloomsbury Academic, amongst others.
Adam has guided students as a Visiting Lecturer in visual cultures, architecture, fashion, and speculative design to think critically about the future of applied technologies, including at the Royal College of Art, Central Saint Martins, Southern California Institute of Architecture, London College of Fashion, Melbourne School of Design, and the School of International Art Beijing. Adam uses design research to reconfigure the ‘design of things’ more broadly through speculative systems thinking, informing strategies, research frameworks, and narratives across fashion, automotive, urban, and technological futures. Industry projects have included work with AUDI AG, Stella McCartney, Accenture, the Science Gallery Network, and Fiat Centro Stile, translating insights across culture, society, and technology into practical strategic frameworks that define and guide ideologically led designed futures.
Adam's early career in architecture informs his non-linear, experimental, three-dimensional approach to artistic, research and strategic design projects, including projects with Heatherwick Studio on the Azabudai Hills in Tokyo, Amanda Levete Architects on the V&A Exhibition Road Quarter in London, WilkinsonEyre on CIBC Square in Toronto, and design leadership on concept design packages for the NEOM development in Saudi Arabia.
Adam is currently a UK Research & Innovation-supported doctoral researcher in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. His PhD project, Toxic Queer Masculinities – Tools for Navigating AI-Integrated Subjectivity, investigates how the AI-integration of existing platforms such as Grindr, Scruff and Instagram produce new formations of queer masculine subjectivity through data extraction, optimisation and algorithmic visibility. His doctoral research brings together visual culture, speculative design, computational methods, and critical AI studies to develop theoretical analysis and practice-based outputs that will contribute to existing and ongoing developments across research, policy, and design for new fashion systems, communication frameworks, platform ecosystems and AI industries.