Peter Polack, PhD (b. 1993, USA) is a Berlin-based artist and researcher whose work examines the creation and consumption of digital worlds as a way people navigate and transform political life. Through immersive virtual environments and audio works, his practice investigates how videogames, cybernetic theories, and surveillance systems have become tools for constructing new forms of identity, division, and resistance. Drawing from his background in computer science, abolitionist organizing, and lived experience with chronic illness, his work interrogates how technological systems promise coherent worlds while producing new forms of vulnerability. He is a participant in BPA// Berlin Program for Artists and a resident at Sybil.
RSV MKII SD
2025 60x60cm
Poster print
2025 60x60cm
Poster print
Tangent Square
2025 60x60cm
Poster print
2025 60x60cm
Poster print
Yaoigruppe
2024 30x42cm
Risograph print
2024 30x42cm
Risograph print
God Mode, 2025
Custom game engine, monologue, selfie ring-light, 3d prints
Aimless wandering in a nostalgic videogame environment turns out to have a dark shadow: ambivalent play mirrors the violence of computational control.
Play here
Garden of Cartesian Desire, 2025
Custom game engine, original soundtrack
A labyrinthian garden promises to free users from their physical ails. Their movements echo the thoughts of philosophers who struggled with illness and disability.
Play the game here
Eliza???, 2025
Unreal Engine, monologue, illustrations, 3d prints
An AI girlfriend chatbot ghosted its user. As he turns to the arcane rituals of tulpamancy and pickup artistry, the programmer reveals himself as programmed.
Computational Parable, 2025
Unreal Engine, Blender, monologue, gas tank, 3d prints, inkjet on acrylic
A data-driven sociologist reflects on his desire to find the root of social unrest, sculpting social relationships on his tabletop canvas. His work reveals a life philosophy of Simulationism, where computational modeling is the truth of the social world.
Emotional Contagion, 2024
Raspberry Pi WiFi network, monologue, ink on paper
A network ensares its visitors in a twisted web of lore and sound. As they connect with the fragments and each other's devices, they reveal themselves as nodes in a network of social contagion, caught in the schemes of the relationship moderation company Hysterica Analytica.
Plataforma, 2024
Unreal Engine, monologue, original soundtrack
A disembodied visitor reflects on the speculative architecture that they see before them. Its conspicuous absence of time and place manifest as a sense of anxiety about purpose and origin.
Egrecorp, 2022
Custom game engine
A utopian experiment in online governance is confronted with a swarm of political tensions and algorithmic illusions, upsetting its ambition to think political organization exclusively in terms of code. Governance systems become a labyrinth of puzzles and horrors.
Play the game here
Diagram, 2021
Custom simulations, single-channel video
Crime analysis software proves to use the same logic as videogames, where algorithms create synthetic narratives to lend a coherent image of truth.
Doomsday Cartography, 2021
Custom game engine, voice actors, field recordings
The worst nightmares of military strategists – from their “Counter-Zombie Dominance” plan to their cinematic descriptions of a future of crime and need in “Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity” – come to life in the Feral City.
CV
2025
Residency: Sybil (DE)
BPA// Berlin Program for Artists (DE)
ZK/U Berlin Zentrum fur Kunst und Urbanistik (DE)
— Openhaus: God Mode
— Openhaus: Computational Parable
2024
ZK/U Berlin Zentrum fur Kunst und Urbanistik (DE)
— Openhaus: Emotional Contagion
Forensic Architecture (UK)
— Humanitarian Violence in Gaza
— Destruction of Medical Infrastructure in Gaza
— Chemical Fire at Marathon Refinery
2023
Forensic Architecture (UK)
— The Grenfell Tower Fire
— The Killing of Sammy Baker
— The Pylos Shipwreck
— Executions and Mass Graves in Tantura
— Tear Gas Tuesday in Downtown Portland
— Environmental Racism in Death Alley, Louisiana
2022
Fragile Solidarity, Fragile Connections, Wagenhalle Kunstverein (DE)
2021
Post-Doom, Akademie Schloss Solitude Web Residency (Online)
Education
Ph.D. Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
2017 - 2022
M.S. Computer Science
Georgia Institute of Technology
2015 - 2017
Minor in Artificial Intelligence
Georgia Institute of Technology
2013 - 2015
B.S. Computational Media
Georgia Institute of Technology
2011 - 2015
Publications and Talks
See writing page
Teaching
Forward Engineering Algorithmic Systems
Technische Universität Berlin
May 3 2024
Vital Computing: Interdisciplinarity and the Incomputable
Technische Universität Berlin
May 2 2024
Digital Cultures and Society (IS 20)
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
June - August 2020
Internet and Society (IS 30)
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
June - August 2020
Research
Graduate Summer Research Fellowship
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
May 2018 - August 2018
Beltline for All (PI: Yanni Loukissas)
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
May 2017 - August 2017
All Data are Local (PI: Yanni Loukissas)
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
August 2016 - May 2017
ArtCenter, NASA JPL, Caltech Visualization Program
Los Angeles, CA
June 2016 - August 2016
National Institutes of Health (PI: Polo Chau)
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
May 2015 - May 2016
Data Science for Social Good
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
May 2015 - August 2015
Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (PI: Tom Eskridge)
Pensacola, FL
May 2013 - August 2015
Awards
Dissertation Year Fellowship
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Oct 2021 - Oct 2022
Graduate Summer Research Fellowship
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Apr 16 2018
Andrew Horn Award
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Sep 11 2017
Extended CV available upon request