person

musician

artist

Nikolay Golikov — system and embedded software engineer, artist, and experimental musician. As part of the Keen Association project, he develops firmware for Buchla-format modules and autonomous musical instruments. He also teaches courses on the fundamentals of electronics and modular synthesis.

His practice combines engineering approaches with artistic methods: working with code and firmware is balanced by media art, sound experiments, and performances. Golikov explores new forms of interaction between humans and technology, the living and the artificial.

His works have been presented at festivals and exhibitions such as Archstoyanie, Prepared Environments, and the International Biennale “Art for the Future.” In 2021, he was nominated for the Innovation Prize in the category “Artist of the Year.”

Explores the interaction of humans and technologies, living and non-living agents, post-biological evolution. His works combine electronic systems with biological processes, where the artificial and the living enter into dialogue.

Works with modular synthesis, sound control systems, and electronics. His projects often explore the boundaries between the body, electricity, and the sonic environment.

Combines his engineering experience with educational practice, making complex technologies accessible to artists. Within the soundartist.ru community, he taught courses on electronics and modular synthesis.

As part of Keen Association, Nikolay developed firmware and algorithms for a range of Buchla-compatible modules, including:

• Model 220/e Polyphonic Touch’n’Run Voltage Array
• Model 240e Entropy & Segments
• Model 268e/269e Graphic Waveform Generator
• Model 282e Quad Transevent Generator and other experimental devices.

These modules enable work with randomness, graphical waveforms, and time/space control — turning engineering solutions into artistic tools.

• Graphic Waveform Generator Model 269e — a rare module that allows one to “draw” waveforms through four oscillators. This is an exploration of the graphic nature of sound and its direct visualization.

• Control Voltage Interpreter Model 253e — a high-functionality CV processor. It investigates how complex control voltages can be transformed into new forms of sound and interaction.

Project with Vladimir Ermachenkov.
Festival: MEDIASPARK, 2022

The project explores the boundaries between body and machine, voluntary and involuntary action. At the center of a metal structure stands a person connected to electrical impulses: their muscle contractions generate sounds when touching metal plates. Music emerges not from the performer’s will, but from the interaction of body and algorithm.

Symbiont raises the question: who is in control — the human, the program, or the device? Can art emerge purely from a physiological reaction?

Exhibition: “12 Signs of the Living”
Publication: Tech Petersburg

The installation explores the boundary between the living and the artificial, the biological and the synthetic. Inside a glass container, a colony of Zophobas beetle larvae feeds on polystyrene. Visitors hear the crunch as insects destroy the material, transforming the artificial into the organic.

The work raises questions of ecology, sustainability, and symbiosis: where is the boundary between destruction and creation? Can the artificial become part of the natural cycle?

Research details — light, sound, vibrations.
Behance

A project that combines the physics of vibration, light, and sound, transforming the materiality of strings into an audiovisual environment. A media processor reads vibrations and translates them into audio-visual patterns.

String Theory explores the interconnection of movement, energy, and perception: how does physical vibration become both visible and audible? Can sound also be an image?

UPCOMING EVENTS

HYBRID MODULES

A series of three lectures about designing digital musical devices with analog and digital components

28.09

Nikolay Golikov

SPEAKER