OFFSHORE
[2025]
OFFSHORE explores the intersection of islands, blockchain technology, and digital property, questioning ownership in decentralized systems. It merges Three.js, GLSL, 3D assets, digital fabrication, and painting to create speculative landscapes.
The project materializes island maps through CNC machining while inscribing digital island renderings on the Bitcoin blockchain, bridging the physical and virtual. By juxtaposing offshore paradises with immutable blockchain spaces, OFFSHORE reflects on sovereignty, anonymity, and value in the digital age.
OFFSHORE by FAR emerges as a critical investigation into the spaces where financial fiction meets geopolitical reality. The work synthesizes material precision with speculative aesthetics, exploring the liminal territories that exist more as vessels for capital than as lived environments. "OFFSHORE feels like a natural evolution of many lines of thought I've been exploring over the past five to ten years, especially in the last five as my practice became more involved with blockchain, decentralization, and the intersection of art and finance," explains the artist. "It's a synthesis of material precision, geopolitical inquiry, and speculative aesthetics. We're living in a moment where technological shifts are deeply entangled with geopolitical tension, and I think this work captures that convergence."
At its core, OFFSHORE examines the tensions inherent in our hyper-financialized global order—the dance between visibility and opacity, center and periphery. The project employs a multi-layered technical approach, combining CNC-machined elements with sophisticated digital fabrication techniques and browser-based interaction through Three.js and GLSL shaders. This material-digital dialogue isn't merely technical showmanship but serves to articulate the work's central inquiry: what does sovereignty mean when it exists simultaneously in physical and digital domains?
Drawing from the artist's architectural background and long engagement with blockchain technologies, OFFSHORE positions itself at the confluence of several critical conversations. It speaks through the visual language of a generation shaped by cyberpunk aesthetics and manga influences—the same visual vocabulary increasingly adopted by contemporary defense contractors and financial entities. "The concept of offshore territories has always intrigued me," the artist notes. "These countries play an essential role in the global system, yet they often exist more as financial fictions than lived realities. No one really lives there, but capital certainly does." The work invites viewers to consider offshore jurisdictions as a kind of paradox: territories that function as essential components of the global financial system while existing primarily as legal abstractions. These spaces compete for attention from onshore wealth, offering refuge for capital as one of their few viable revenue streams. "What's especially fascinating is how these jurisdictions compete with one another, and how one selects a particular offshore entity over another. It's a kind of choice you only make from an onshore position, and that tension between visibility and opacity, center and periphery, runs deep in the work."
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INTERVIEW
1. On how OFFSHORE builds on your previous work:
OFFSHORE feels like a natural evolution of many lines of thought I've been exploring over the past five to ten years, especially in the last five as my practice became more involved with blockchain, decentralization, and the intersection of art and finance. I've been increasingly drawn to how artworks can interact with financial systems, and how the audience for these works now includes not just art collectors, but traders and people deeply invested in economics and technology.
My background in architecture was grounded in digital fabrication, materials experimentation, and 3D tooling. From early on, it was obvious to me that the built environment was on the cusp of exponential transformation. Over time, my focus shifted toward visual culture and the creation of digital images, but those architectural roots never left. With OFFSHORE, those threads finally converge. It's a synthesis of material precision, geopolitical inquiry, and speculative aesthetics. We're living in a moment where technological shifts are deeply entangled with geopolitical tension, and I think this work captures that convergence.
I find today's visual culture particularly fascinating. Take Anduril, for example, a weapons manufacturer that uses social media to showcase products designed by a new generation of engineers. Their output is wrapped in cyberpunk and manga aesthetics, clearly geared toward younger, millennial audiences. It's a kind of branding that signals a generational shift, leaving the old defense-industrial aesthetic behind. OFFSHORE lives in that same world. It speaks to and through the aesthetics of a hyper-financialized, hyper-mediated, geopolitical order.
The concept of offshore territories has always intrigued me. These countries play an essential role in the global system, yet they often exist more as financial fictions than lived realities. No one really lives there, but capital certainly does. As the global economy intensified, many of these nations started actively courting the wealthy, offering refuge for capital as one of their few viable revenue streams. What's especially fascinating is how these jurisdictions compete with one another, and how one selects a particular offshore entity over another. It's a kind of choice you only make from an onshore position, and that tension between visibility and opacity, center and periphery, runs deep in the work.
2. On your background in traditional practices and influence of Wodiczko:
There's a clear connection between designing the built environment with CAD and early 3D software, and later becoming deeply immersed in visual culture. That shift came naturally for me. It goes back again to the case of Anduril, whose aesthetics and maybe even motivations seem inspired by cyberpunk and manga. These types of connections have always fascinated me. That's why I once wrote about the two versions of Blade Runner, and how each presents a radically different vision of the future. The first is rich with personality, layered with Art Deco architecture. The second feels flat, almost devoid of architecture, especially in the scenes set in Vegas. It raises the question of whether we, as algorithmic species, come before or after these cinematic visions.
It took me a while to fully understand what my interest had been all along. In architecture school, I was already using animation software to generate building forms, but it hadn't yet clicked. It wasn't until my PhD at the film school that I realized my interest was actually in software itself, and in the making of images. At its core, it's always been about surface. In architecture, it's the surface of the building, the division of spaces, the articulation of windows. In cinema, it's the projection surface of the screen. And that's why working with Krzysztof Wodiczko was so crucial for me.
Krzysztof Wodiczko is one of the most important artists when it comes to exploring the intersections of technology, art, and architecture. His work is incredibly deep, and the way he resolves the technical aspects of his practice is something I find endlessly fascinating. For people like me who come to art through design, Krzysztof offers a bridge. He speaks both languages, and not many artists can do that. That dual fluency is rare and powerful.
So to conclude, regardless of the object of study or the theoretical lens, what drives me is the act of manifesting those ideas through technology. That's the throughline in all my work.
3. On digital property, offshore havens, and blockchain systems:
That's a very interesting question, especially now, when many of us who are deep in crypto are questioning its role and purpose more critically than ever. When we think about what the killer use of crypto really is, we come back again and again to the idea of self-sovereignty. That's why Bitcoin is re-emerging as the most resilient and meaningful cryptocurrency. Ethereum gained popularity for offering a global computing platform and a more sophisticated blockchain structure, but at its core, Bitcoin remains the ultimate expression of digital ownership. In a world that feels increasingly fragile and where individuals often feel vulnerable, owning Bitcoin has become the most material and direct form of sovereignty.
Between Quantum Cats and Taproot Wizards, I launched a project called FLARES, which started to explore this very idea—creating digital worlds inscribed fully on-chain on Bitcoin. OFFSHORE continues in that direction but deepens the dialogue. It brings together the language of self-sovereignty, the legal fictions of offshore jurisdictions, and the purity of the blockchain as a system of truth. In OFFSHORE, these ideas are superimposed to ask what ownership really means in both physical and digital space. The project is a way of using the blockchain not just as a storage system, but as a site for geopolitical and philosophical inquiry.
