Pedro Victor Brandão is an artist, developer, and cultural strategist based in Rio de Janeiro. His work moves between painting, photography, software, public datasets, blockchain infrastructure, and experiments in cultural organization.
He is the co-founder of Uint Studio, teaches Creative Blockchain Applications at Shifta by Elisava, and collaborates with The Sphere, a project exploring new ecologies of funding for live arts. In both his artistic practice and his technical work, Pedro is interested in the systems that sit behind culture: how it is funded, archived, distributed, valued, and made public.
What are you working on currently?
Many things. There’s an upcoming protocol built on top of ERC-4626 vaults, which I’m developing together with artists Giseli Vasconcelos and Vitor Butkus. With uint studio, we are about to launch a website created for Alayde Alves, a Brazilian art collector who has been supporting a whole generation of artists. I just finished teaching the 9th cohort of the Master in Creative Computing at Shifta by Elisava, where I’m responsible for the Creative Blockchain Applications module, which is always a real pleasure. Offscreen, I’m finishing four new paintings about land use in Brazil, made after conversations with Erik Bordeleau. I’ve also been eagerly attending a series of web3 cafés organized by participatory designer Luisa Fosco, with support from the Localism Fund. What a difference it makes to put a group chat in a room, for real.
Dream collaborator?
Gökhan Turhan could be fun to work with.
What are your Red flags/green flags when evaluating a startup/founder?
Red flags: Overconfidence and fixation with scaling.
Green flags: Treating complex problems with accessible language, and leaving room for weirdness.
What do you want the future to look like?
Less luxury futurism, more decent life. Keynes’s Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren still feels relevant almost a century later. A decent life does not require endless growth, endless work, or endless competition. The hard part is changing the incentives that keep postponing that future. So yes: frugal, semi-automated, venture-commonist.
Overhyped/underhyped?
Overhyped: Prediction markets.
Underhyped: Onchain collective savings circles.
What’s a belief you hold that most people in your industry would disagree with?
The best technology is not always the one that creates a new market. Sometimes the best technology makes a market less necessary.
What’s something you’ve changed your mind on in the last few years?
AI changed my sense of risk and urgency. It made execution feel cheaper, but also made some kinds of slowness more important: judgment, refusal, context, and knowing what not to delegate to LLMs.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ignored?
In my early twenties, a renowned curator told me I should focus on a single medium as an artist. It made sense as advice. Everyone needs some kind of focus. But for me, it was not really an option. Most of the interesting outcomes, encounters, and discoveries in my career have come from an interdisciplinary impulse that extends beyond the field of art. Had I focused only on photography or painting back then, I probably would never have learned about finance, become curious about the economic state of the world, or started making experiments with art on blockchains as early as 2013.
What do you spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about?
I have been thinking a lot about how agentic advertising economies and AI-generated influencers might bring a whole new level of unusability for the web in general.
What’s on your playlist right now?
“Raizes Deluxe Version: The Final Evolution”, a masterpiece afro house compilation by DJ Satelite and DJ Galio released by Seres Produções. Been on repeat these days, some tracks are likely to make their way in my quebra-tacos sets.
Fav product?
Tapioca, because it’s like magic bread.
About ADIN
ADIN is a highly AI focused pursuit (bringing algorithmic venture with the full force of AI agents). ADIN is also just as much about the people. We’re building a network where early-stage funding happens faster, fairer, and with more incentives for the people on the bleeding edge. If you want to be part of that, apply here to be a scout or investor and follow ADIN as we keep opening doors.
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