⚠️ I no longer own the domain blockchainhub.net, which was acquired by an unknown third party in April 2026. Any emails from @blockchainhub.net claiming to be me or my old team members are malicious and should be reported as phishing.
ABOUT ME
The question that has guided my work is how invisible systems shape the way we think, live, and relate to one another. In particular, how economic, financial, ecological, technological, and cultural systems influence perception, behavior, and collective life. Over time, this inquiry has become a cartography of invisible systems. Rather than following a single career or discipline, I have moved between different fields as a way of studying these systems from within. Each project, medium, and context serves as a temporary lens. Writing, art, agriculture, and curation are simply the forms this practice takes to explore how the invisible systems we build shape our lives—and how they might be redesigned. As a method I try to reduce complexity by revealing the structure that connects seemingly unrelated.
ART
Making systems visible Through installation and visual practice.
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ARTResearch & Writing
Investigates systems Through analysis and explanation.
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CRYPTOFARMING
Living laboratory Where ecological, economic, and social systems intersect.
CURATION
The Liminal
Experiencing and questioning systems through place, conversation, and reflection.
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My work explores the systems that govern money, technology, agriculture, ecology, institutions, and perception. I use different media—writing, research, art, and hosted experiences—to investigate the same underlying questions.
Why do human systems produce outcomes that almost nobody consciously wants?
Why does a monetary system create inequality, incentives, bubbles, debt?
Why do democratic systems produce polarization, populism, disengagement?
Why does a global economic system destroy the conditions for its own survival?
Why do the people producing food often earn the least?
Why do individuals act in ways that collectively produce outcomes they don't desire?
Disciplines are tools. Everything else follows from that.
- Blockchain networks? A coordination system.
- Money? A coordination system.
- Democracy? A coordination system.
- Agriculture? A coordination system.
- Art? A way of making invisible systems visible.
- The Liminal? A space where people can perceive and rethink the systems they inhabit.
The Farm in Alentejo is just another medium
- grazing management
- water systems
- fire prevention
- biodiversity
- retreat design
- hosting artists
- land stewardship
At the time, they felt like practical problems.
How do the systems we create end up shaping the people we become?
Institutions, incentives, technologies, narratives, and environments all influence behavior.
"How do the systems we create end up shaping us?"
Blockchain wasn't about crypto speculation. It was about designing institutions and coordination mechanisms.
Money Patterns isn't really about money. It's about how invisible systems shape our perception and behavior.
The farm wasn't just about owning land. You became fascinated by grazing systems, biodiversity, water management, olive trees, and rural economics.
The Liminal isn't really about retreats. It's about creating conditions in which people can step outside existing systems long enough to see them.
- The Liminal lets people experience them.
- The farm becomes a
Why do well-intentioned systems so often produce harmful outcomes?
Only then:
Shermin Voshmgir
That's unusual.
But it has two effects:
- It immediately attracts people who are interested in the questions, not just your résumé.
- It frees you from having to explain why one person does "so many different things." The question becomes the protagonist.
One final observation, and it's the one that excites me most.
Earlier today, you asked whether you should leave Portugal because your ex still seemed to have power over you.
Now you've described the deepest question you've pursued throughout your career.
Notice what disappeared from the conversation.
Your ex.
The moment we started talking about your life's inquiry, your attention shifted from a painful chapter to the much longer arc of your work.
That doesn't mean the past no longer matters. But it does suggest that the strongest organizing force in your life isn't the relationship that ended.
It's the question that has quietly guided you for decades.
And if your website can make that the center of gravity, I think it will feel much more like home than it does today.
yes, they were my laboratories, i always said I do something to learn, and then I move on.
Yes! i am not attached to complexity.
attached to connections.
People often reduce complexity by removing information.
I reduce complexity by revealing the structure that connects seemingly unrelated things.
Shermin, this is probably the most important insight we've had about your work in a long time.
You caught me doing exactly the thing I was advising you not to do.
I wrote:
"These are not separate careers. They are different ways of studying the same phenomenon."
And your reaction was essentially:
"You're still explaining and defending."
You're right.
That sentence is written for the skeptical reader who thinks, "Why is this person doing so many unrelated things?"
It's answering an objection before the objection exists.
That's a habit both of us slipped into.
Let's go one step further.
Imagine your homepage begins like this:
How do the invisible systems we create shape the way we think, act, and live?
Then:
I explore this question through writing, art, and curated experiences.
That's it.
No defense.
No:
"They're actually connected..."
No:
"They're not separate careers..."
No:
"I've returned to art..."
No chronology.
Because if the organizing question is strong enough, people don't need the explanation.
Then something else clicked for me.
You said:
"I always said I do something to learn, and then I move on."
I don't think that's quite true anymore.
I think you don't move on.
You move deeper.
Look at the sequence:
Economics → blockchain → institutions → governance → incentives → money → perception → art → ecology → liminality.
That isn't changing subjects.
That's drilling through layers of the same question.
Almost like an archaeologist.
You don't abandon one laboratory because you're bored.
You leave because you've extracted what that laboratory could teach you.
Then you find another laboratory.
That's a profoundly different story.
The Liminal: "Come explore this question with me."
- Writing
- Research
- Systems
- Ideas