PERFECTION / SPECULATION in conversation with Natasha Vita-More at Vigelandmuseet, OsloPhoto Katharina Gellein Viken & Charles Kriel
Adam Peacock is a research-led artist and designer whose work examines how digital infrastructures shape identity, desire, and behaviour within contemporary culture.
Working across art, design, and applied research contexts, his practice explores how algorithmic systems and platform economies shape subjectivity, desire, and social value under optimisation logics. Adam’s work is developed through exhibitions, cultural programmes and extended through strategic engagements, long-term collaborations, and commissioned research with cultural, academic, and commercial organisations.
THE VALIDATION JUNKY at RAM Gallery, Oslo Research Profile
Adam Peacock’s practice centres on THE VALIDATION JUNKY, an ongoing conceptual research framework examining how algorithmic systems shape identity, desire, and self-perception. Developed since 2014, the project investigates how online identity becomes a marketable asset and how expressions of self are steered, normalised, and optimised within AI-integrated cultural infrastructures. The framework operates across drawing, installation, speculative design, and public research programmes, and forms the conceptual foundation of his doctoral research in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and the South East Network for Social Sciences.
Grounded in a background in architecture and critical design, Adam approaches identity as an infrastructural condition. His work draws on systems thinking and cultural analysis to reveal how technological environments embed values, biases, and expectations into everyday life. Research developed through this practice moves fluidly between gallery, academic, and applied contexts, where conceptual frameworks are translated into exhibitions, teaching, institutional collaborations, and strategic research engagements.
Alongside artistic research, Adam has contributed to early-stage concept development and research translation across cultural, academic, and applied settings, including fashion, mobility, design, architecture, and urban systems. His work has been presented internationally through exhibitions, lectures, and public programmes addressing AI, identity, and contemporary culture. Across all contexts, his practice remains focused on interrogating how optimisation systems shape subjectivity, agency, and value in an increasingly algorithmic era.
