Adam Harvey

Adam Harvey (US/DE) is an artist, software engineer, and applied researcher based in Berlin. His work is focused on computer vision, privacy, and surveillance technologies. Harvey is a graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University (2010) and Pennsylvania State University (2001).

Harvey’s research and artwork has been featured in prominent media publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Nature, New Yorker, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Washington Post, Le Monde, The Guardian, BBC, Economist, and the Financial Times; and shown at internationally acclaimed institutions and events including the V&A museum (UK), Seoul Mediacity Biennale (KR), Istanbul Design Biennale (TK), Frankfurter Kunstverien (DE), Zeppelin Museum (DE), Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (US), and Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (US).

Recently, Harvey developed VFRAME, a computer vision project for human rights researchers working on OSINT investigations. VFRAME received an Award of Distinction from Ars Electronica in 2019, was nominated for the EU STARTS prize in 2018, and nominated for a Beazley Design of The Year Award in 2019. The project is in active development and the latest research was presented at the 2021 Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining Mine Action Technology Workshop.

Harvey has worked as a research fellow at the Künstlich Intelligenz und Medienphilosophie program at Karlsruhe HfG, a digital fellow at the Weizenbaum Institut in Berlin working on exposing.ai, a Future Fellow with the 2020 Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future at Eyebeam, as part of research fellowship for the Copenhagen Business School, and as an adjunct professor at New York University and School of Visual Arts in NYC. He currently works as an academic technologist and researcher for the Karlsruhe HfG AI Forensics project.

Short Bio #

Adam Harvey (US/DE) is an artist and applied researcher based in Berlin focused on computer vision, privacy, and surveillance. He is a graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University (2010) and is the creator of the VFRAME.io computer vision project, Exposing.ai dataset project, and CV Dazzle computer vision camouflage concept.

Connect #

I’m based in Berlin and enjoy working with researchers, artists, designers, and inventors on topics and challenges related to data, privacy, surveillance, and computer vision.

• Email: hello at harvey studio
  • Tip: for fastest reply use private and secure email like ProtonMail
  • Insecure emails that contain tracking links or tracking pixels may be automatically deleted
• Mastodon: tldr.nettime.org/@adam_harvey
• Twitter: twitter.com/adamhrv (less active)
• Github: github.com/adamhrv
• Signal: contact for info

Selected Events and Press Archive #

2021 #

• June 2021: Economist writes about VFRAME: AI helps scour video archives for evidence of human-rights abuses
• Feb 2021: WSJ writes about VFRAME project and how AI emerges as Crucial Tool for Groups Seeking Justice for Syria War Crimes (paywall)
• Feb 2021: NYT writes about Exposing.ai project: “ Here’s a Way to Learn if Facial Recognition Systems Used Your Photos.”

2020 #

• Nov 18: Nature writes about Exposing.ai project in “ The ethical questions that haunt facial-recognition research”
• Oct 22: Creative Commons Summit 2020: Panel on usage of CC licensed media in face recognition datasets
• Oct 7: Facial Recognition Datasets Workshop with Disruption Lab in Berlin
• Sept 5: Tagesspiegel: „CV Dazzle“ : Mit Schminke gegen die Gesichtserkennung
• Sept 4: GalleryTalk: Laborratten Adam Harvey zeigt wie die menschliche Öffentlichtkeit zur wissenschaftlichen Wildnis wird
• Aug. 27: Face First: Researchers Gone Wild, an exhibition about image training datasets collected “in the wild” at Eigen Lab, Berlin
• June 26: MIT Technology Review on VFRAME project: Human rights activists want to use AI to help prove war crimes in court
• June 23: MegaPixels included in Künstliche Intelligenz. Die Reorganisation der Welt exhibition. Dresden 2021.
• June 16: CV Dazzle, Black Lives Matter, and Can Makeup Be an Anti-Surveillance Tool?
• March 9. New Yorker on Dressing for The Surveillance Age.
• July 13: New York Times on MegaPixels: Facial Recognition Tech Is Growing Stronger, Thanks to Your Face

2019 #

• June, 2019: Financial Times, BBC, and Spiegel.de write about MegaPixels project
• June 20: Ohne Zustimmung an Studie teilgenommen
• June 14: talk on facial recognition at AI Traps, Disruption Network Lab
• June 9: ORF.at podcast on VFRAME: AI fights for human rights
• June: Eyeo, talk on facial recognition datasets and future of computer vision
• May 22: VFRAME receives Award of Distinction from Ars Electronica for using computer vision for human rights
• April 20: MegaPixels featured in Financial Times
• April – June. Maastricht, NL. DataPools with Anastasia Kubrak at Bureau Europa
• March: SkyLift + DataPools on display at OPEN LABS in Dublin
• April: IDA Salon on computer vision and visual forensics in Luzern
• Building Archives for Evidence and Collective Resistance at Transmediale 2019
• Jan 2019: CPDP 2019. MegaPixels: Who’s in Publicly Available Facial Recognition Datasets?
• 11.16.2018 - 17.2.2018, Berlin: VFRAME - at Ars Electronica Export in Berlin
• 15.11.2018 - 18.11.2018, Kassel (DE): MegaPixels - Face Dataset Search at Monitoring in Kassel (DE)
• Berlin: ‘Anti-Drone Parka’ commission for German Spy Museum, a collaboration with Acronym
• 22.9.2018 - 4.11.2028, Istanbul: Data Pools at Istanbul Design Biennal 2018
• 2.6.2018 - 2.9.2018, Berlin: Data Pools - Wi-Fi geolocation spoofing device on view at tropeztropez.de
• 6.9.2018, Aarhus (DK): Lecture on Minimizing Facial Surface Attack Areas at Univ. of Aarhus Shy Faces
• Germany: HyperFace textile exhibited at Vitra Design Museum: Politics of Design

2018 #

• Berlin: Pedestrian Dataset Analysis for Nomadic Bodies show at Eigen Lab
• Washington DC, July 19: Color of Surveillance Eventbrite
• Prague, CZ: Think Privacy on view at DOX Datamaze
• Karlsruhe, DE: SkyLift: WiFi geolocation spoofing device at ZKM Open Codes / Schloss Web Residencies Exhibition
• Berlin, May 2-4: Accelerating Human Rights Investigations with Computer Vision w/ Syrian Archive @ re-publica
• Berlin, May 2-4: Biometric Systems of Control w/ Matthew Stender @ re-publica
• 14.2.2018 - 8.4.2018, Frankfurt (DE): CV Dazzle at Frankfurter Kunstverein

2017 #

• London, 11.2017: MegaPixels at Glass Room, a project about facial recognition training datasets

About this site #

This site is designed to be privacy-friendly and does not use any 3rd party analytics to track visits, nor any 3rd party dependencies that compromise privacy or share data. The site is built with Markdown, generated in Hugo, and served as static files using Digital Ocean App platform.