RESISTING OPTIMISATION
OSLO & LONDON, 2026
RESISTING OPTIMISATION is a series of sculptural drawings exploring how AI-integrated platforms shape subjectivity in digital cultures. The project combines artistic research with critical design, looking at how AI-integrated platforms sort, filter, and rank individuals. These systems impact contemporary cultures and disproportionately affect marginalised groups, since their needs were not considered when large language models (LLMs) were built. The project builds a visual language, derived from parametric modelling, as a prompt to invite audiences to question how these systems shape contemporary subjectivity and perceived realities through subtle nudging and market-driven pressures.
The project develops an abstracted aesthetic language that visualises the vectors in AI LLMs, currently in their trillions (2026 ChatGPT era 5.5), through a bespoke computational modelling workflow. This workflow is then plugged into a modelled jacket, creating body-derived geometry that is then manually fine-tuned with parametric nodes and constrained within a volume. The drawings are made through a combination of an X-Y drawing machine and a (human) hand. This process layers oil paint on bright-annealed stainless steel, with the reflective surface mirroring the viewer, placing the observer’s body inside the visualised AI LLM. The desaturated metallic colours suggest the cold, hard quality of a machine that measures, sorts and ranks the soft warmth of human complexity. The project contributes to dialogue between artists, technologists and the public on what it might mean to develop tools that allow platform users to navigate, interrupt – or maybe even resist – the gamified logic of algorithmic optimisation, engaging with platform cultures with greater agency and authenticity.
Keywords - Human-centred AI, Queer Machines, Algorithmic transparency, AI Infrastructures, Platform Economies, Algorithmic Bias, Digital Subjectivities, Human–Machine Collaboration, Speculative Design, Critical AI
The project develops an abstracted aesthetic language that visualises the vectors in AI LLMs, currently in their trillions (2026 ChatGPT era 5.5), through a bespoke computational modelling workflow. This workflow is then plugged into a modelled jacket, creating body-derived geometry that is then manually fine-tuned with parametric nodes and constrained within a volume. The drawings are made through a combination of an X-Y drawing machine and a (human) hand. This process layers oil paint on bright-annealed stainless steel, with the reflective surface mirroring the viewer, placing the observer’s body inside the visualised AI LLM. The desaturated metallic colours suggest the cold, hard quality of a machine that measures, sorts and ranks the soft warmth of human complexity. The project contributes to dialogue between artists, technologists and the public on what it might mean to develop tools that allow platform users to navigate, interrupt – or maybe even resist – the gamified logic of algorithmic optimisation, engaging with platform cultures with greater agency and authenticity.
Keywords - Human-centred AI, Queer Machines, Algorithmic transparency, AI Infrastructures, Platform Economies, Algorithmic Bias, Digital Subjectivities, Human–Machine Collaboration, Speculative Design, Critical AI
Machine and hand-drawn oil paint on Stainless Steel, 16 Tiles
124 x 174cm, Oslo 2026
Installation Photo, Jon Gorospe/SKOG
Resisting Optimisation 02–1
Machine and hand-drawn oil paint on Stainless Steel
14.8 x 21 cm, Oslo 2026
Installation Photo, Jon Gorospe/SKOG
Resisting Optimisation 00-7, 00-1, 00-2, 00-5
Machine and hand-drawn oil paint on Stainless Steel
29.7 × 42cm each, Oslo 2026
Installation Photo, Jon Gorospe/SKOG
Resisting Optimisation 00-3, 00-6, 00-2, 00-7, 00-1
Machine and hand-drawn oil paint on Stainless Steel
(00-7, 00-1, 00-2, 00-5) 29.7 × 42cm each
(00-3) 16 tiles, 124 x 174cm
Oslo 2026
Installation Photo, Jon Gorospe/SKOG
Resisting Optimisation 00–10
Machine and hand-drawn oil paint on Stainless Steel, 16 Tiles
88 x 64 cm, Oslo 2026
Installation Photo, Jon Gorospe/SKOG
RESISTING OPTIMISATION
WORKFLOW EXPERIMENTS
2026, [Presented in an invited Lecture], ‘THE VALIDATION JUNKY — Tools for navigating AI-mediated subjectivity’, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK, for MA Material Futures, invited by Dr Agi Haines. Photos by Marieta Papazyan
RESISTING OPTIMISATION
Component of a series of designed PhD experiments, Tools for navigating AI-integrated subjectivity.
Further research resources can be found here
Artist, researcher and project lead, Adam Peacock
Curatorial collaboration, Brian Noguera, Kim Gabrielli, Ida Kathrine Hansen
Exhibition partner, SKOG Art Space Oslo
Project research supervision, Dr Emily Rosamond and Dr Scott Wark, Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London
Curatorial collaboration, Brian Noguera, Kim Gabrielli, Ida Kathrine Hansen
Exhibition partner, SKOG Art Space Oslo
Project research supervision, Dr Emily Rosamond and Dr Scott Wark, Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London
Support received from, UK Economic and Social Research Council ESRC; South and East Network for Social Sciences SENSS; Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London; Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London
SELECTED PROJECT ENGAGEMENT
2026, [Presented at an invited Conference], ‘RESISTING OPTIMISATION: Artificial Intelligence, Queer Masculinity, and the Construction of Digital Subjectivity’, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain. II International Conference: Cartographies of Platform Labour in the Digital City, organised by Grupo de Estudios Críticos Urbanos (Critical Urban Studies Group).
2026, [Presented in an invited Lecture], ‘THE VALIDATION JUNKY — Tools for navigating AI-mediated subjectivity’, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK, for MA Material Futures, invited by Dr Agi Haines.
2026, [Presented in an invited Lecture], ‘THE VALIDATION JUNKY — Tools for navigating AI-mediated subjectivity’, Royal College of Art, London, UK, for Dr Gareth Polmeer’s cross-RCA Synthetic Encounters Elective: ‘Shapeshifting the Digital’ at the School of Arts and Humanities.
2026, [Presented in an invited Lecture], ‘THE VALIDATION JUNKY — Tools for navigating AI-mediated subjectivity’, Royal College of Art, London, UK, for MA Fashion, with Viktoria Modesta, Carlo Volpi and Philip Delamore, invited by Zowie Broach, Head of Programme: MA Fashion at the RCA.
2026, [Presented at an invited Conference], ‘RESISTING OPTIMISATION: Artificial Intelligence, Queer Masculinity, and the Construction of Digital Subjectivity’, King’s College London, UK. Bodies in Digital Transition: Mapping a Topology of Digital Bodies.
2026, [Presented at an invited Conference], ‘Toxic Queer Masculinities, Tools for navigating AI-integrated subjectivity.’ University of Lincoln, UK, ‘The Future of the Social Sciences‘.
2026, [RESISTING OPTIMISATION 00-11], Exhibited at BLEUR Gallery, London
2026, [Full exhibition], Exhibited at SKOG Art Space, Oslo
