Eryk Salvaggio

Eryk Salvaggio is a researcher and artist interested in the social and cultural impacts of artificial intelligence. His work explores the creative misuse of AI and the transformation of archives into datasets for AI training: a practice designed to expose ideologies of tech and to confront the gaps between datasets and the worlds they claim to represent. Eryk is a Gates Scholar at the University of Cambridge for a PhD in the Digital Humanities, examining the relationship between archival practices and generative AI.

A blend of hacker, researcher, curator, and artist, he has been published in academic journals including Leonardo, Critical AI, and Patterns. He has presented his work at venues including the Centre Pompidou and the Jeu de Paume (Paris), The New Museum (NYC), The Photographer’s Gallery (London) and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Melbourne).

He is a researcher on AI, art and education at the metaLab (at) Harvard University, a former artist-in-residence at the Max Planck Institute’s Machine Visual Culture Research Group at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, a former research fellow at the Flickr Foundation, and a 2025 writing fellow for Tech Policy Press. For four years, he served as the Emerging Technology Research Advisor to the Siegel Family Endowment. He holds an MSc in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and an MSc in Applied Cybernetics from the Australian National University.

Art, Design & Technology

Eryk’s work examines the relationships between systems, power, and technology, particularly in generative AI. Art is a means of finding unique insights into techno-social assemblages, and his writing on art and tech has appeared in academic journals such as Leonardo, Communications of the ACM, IMAGE, and Patterns. Since 2001, his award-winning work has been shown at the Australian Center for the Moving Image, Bunjil Place (Australia), the CVPR Art Gallery, Michigan State University Science Museum, the UN Internet Governance Forum, Eyebeam, CalArts, Brown University, Turbulence, The Internet Archive, and at various film festivals. His work is referenced in numerous publications, including Jon Ippolito & Joline Blais’ At the Edge of Art, Alex Galloway's Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization, and Martha Langford’s Image & Imagination.

He has presented talks, keynotes or works at events such as SXSW and DEFCON 31, and at academic conferences, including the Design Research Society Conference (2024, MIT Media Lab), ACM FAccT 2024, the Systems Research & Design Conference (RSD10, 11, & 12), the Advances in Systems Sciences and Systems Practice Conference (2022), Melbourne Design Week (2021), MIT Press (2021), the University of St. Gallen (2018), California College of the Arts (2018, 2019, 2020), the University of Maine, RightsCon (2020), and Gensler San Francisco (2017).

He has worked with partners including AIxDesign’s Story & Code program, the AI Village at DEFCON 31, Space10, the Australian National University, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Wikimedia Foundation, the Internet Archive, and the National Gallery of Australia. His artwork has been presented at SXSW, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the White House-backed AI Village at the hacker convention DEFCON 31, the New Museum, Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, the UN Internet Governance Forum, and the DAHJ Gallery. He has been highlighted in pieces with Wired, the BBC4, The New York Times, ArtForum, NBC News, Neural, Dirty, Mute Magazine, and Outland.

Teaching & Public Speaking

Eryk’s course on AI images was endorsed by the Harvard MetaLab’s AI Pedagogy Project in 2023. He has taught as a visiting professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Department of Humanities, Computation & Design; the Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering; and he has given talks and lectures at Brown University, the MIT Media Lab, Harvard University, the University of Cambridge, RMIT, the Australian National University, NYU, the New School for Social Research, John Cabot University, Aarhus, the University of Copenhagen, UC Fresno, Northeastern University, University of Maryland, and the University of Maine.