Maotik's first personal exhibition in Russia at Ziferhaus gallery is your chance to plunge into a compelling individual experience, explore the possibilities of software code and data transforming into images, and broaden your understanding of digital art boundaries.

Maotik is one of the most awarded and recognizable French media artists worldwide. In his art practices, he employs computer algorithms to create an environment that transforms reality and explores the connection between art and technology in pursuit of new ways of expression. Maotik's projects blend physical objects, generative graphics, light, sound, and haptic interfaces to immerse the visitors in a novel multi-sensory experience.

The Impulse brings together six immersive works, one of which was created specifically for this project: it is a trip to an exotic world where you can navigate a flock of electric fireflies, where digital gardens burst into blossom with a touch of your hand, and where you can create your own audiovisual performance.


Exhibition curator: Olga Vad (NADO Cultural Projects Agency)

The installation treats technology as a new nature, telling us how immersion into the digital space can change our relationships with the planet. A tangible user interface, or touch user interface, is employed to enable interaction with the project. You can manipulate the digital content on the screen using physical objects – just sort through leaves and flowers on the interactive table to launch the audiovisual installation. Hand movements and reshuffling of objects are “transformed” into images of plants on the video wall.

The central hall of the exhibition is dedicated to Superposition – a project that focuses on collective communication and a search for a common language. The artist calls this exhibit a living digital organism with unpredictable behavior patterns. Designed to operate as a theremin, the installation responds to hand movements and produces unpredictable visual and acoustic reactions. By interacting with the exhibit, you become a co-author of a real-time audiovisual performance.

The project immerses you into the vibe of the night and allows you to explore its cobalt blue fabric.
The artist believes that the time between sunset and midnight, when all life comes to a stop, is the perfect time for self-cognition and creativity.
The project's meditative soundscape and hypnotic visuals captivate you and softly immerse you in this state.

Bloom is an interactive installation where you can create digital flowers using touch. Sensors capture your hand movements and transform them into abstract shapes that look like plants brightly flashing on the screens. A soundtrack generated by your interaction with the image adds to the “blooming” of digital gardens. As the flowers grow and bloom, the accompanying music changes.

The project lets you see the similarity between the work of an artist and a scientist, and to experiment with data in search of insights. This installation interprets different stages of research practice in the study of atoms. The electronic microscope is the key interactive element of the scene. The project invites visitors to dive into the splendor of the microworld and explore the structures of particles by placing various pattern compositions on the microscope glass and watching the result of their research on a large screen.

This multimedia representation of a natural ecosystem, where a visitor can engage in a poetic dialog with a flock of laser fireflies, is one of Moatik's most spectacular installations. The exhibit space resembles a night forest filled with flickering lights that you can delight and even control. Just raise your hands to the interactive stands that help manipulate the laser beams, and the sensors will capture your hand movements and let you direct the fireflies.