PERFECTION / SPECULATION in conversation with Natasha Vita-More at the Vigeland Museum, OsloPhoto Katharina Gellein Viken & Charles Kriel
Adam Peacock is a research-led artist and designer whose work focuses on how digital and algorithmic infrastructures shape identity, desire and behaviour within contemporary culture.
Working across art, design and applied research contexts, his practice examines how algorithmic systems, platform economies and optimisation logics actively structure how identity is produced, performed and evaluated.
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 Adam Peacock Biography 2026 – 543 words
Adam Peacock is a research-led artist and designer based between Oslo and London, whose work examines how digital and algorithmic infrastructures shape identity, desire and behaviour within contemporary culture.
Trained as an architect at the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL, he completed an MA in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art, where he developed the speculative research framework The Validation Junky. Initiated during this period and continuously expanded since, the project applies architectural systems thinking to the contemporary body, investigating how platform economies, AI-driven classification and optimisation logics produce new forms of subjectivity and social value.
Key projects developed under his research lens include Machines for Automating Taste (commissioned by the Visible Futures Lab, SVA, New York City), which used designed artefacts and illustrations to explore how AI mechanisms might synthesise aesthetic sensibilities; GENETICS GYM (commissioned by the Fashion Space Gallery, UAL), which treated the body as a malleable interface for investigating the computational synthesis of genes and memes; and PERFECTION/SPECULATION, a collaboration with PRAKSIS Oslo, the Vigeland Museum, Karmaklubb* and interlocutors from MIT, CUNY and SCI-Arc, convening international discourse around biotechnologies, new media, constructs of beauty and enhancement culture. His work has been exhibited and presented internationally, including with Tecnológico de Monterrey, Trinity College Dublin, Science Gallery Melbourne, Product Innovation Apparel Milan, 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, featured by the BBC, The Irish Times, Art Guide Australia, and published by Bloomsbury Academic.
Parallel to his practice, Adam has held visiting lectureships internationally 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, guiding interdisciplinary students across architecture, fashion and speculative design to engage with technological futures critically. Alongside his artistic research practice, Adam applies speculative and systems-led thinking in strategic contexts, shaping narratives and identity frameworks across mobility, fashion, urban and technological futures. His work with Audi, Stella McCartney, Accenture, the Science Gallery Network and Fiat Centro Stile translates cultural analysis into applied strategy for future-facing brands and organisations.
Adam‘s early career in large-scale architectural practice informs this approach. He worked at Heatherwick Studio on the Azabudai Hills development in Tokyo, at Amanda Levete Architects on the V&A Exhibition Road Quarter in London, and at WilkinsonEyre on CIBC Square in Toronto, before leading concept design strategy packages for NEOM in Saudi Arabia. Architecture provided a systems-based methodology that now underpins his research into technological culture.
He is currently an ESRC-supported doctoral researcher in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. His PhD project, Toxic Queer Masculinities – Tools for Navigating AI-Integrated Subjectivity, examines how AI-driven platforms such as Grindr, Scruff and Instagram produce new formations of queer masculinity through data extraction, optimisation and algorithmic visibility. His doctoral research brings together visual culture, speculative design, computational methods and critical AI studies to develop both theoretical analysis and practice-based outputs.
Across exhibitions, research publications and strategic collaborations, Adam’s work translates critical research into material, visual and organisational forms, uncovering and visualising the infrastructures that shape contemporary identity.