My blog has been pretty quiet this year—not from lack of activity, but because I’ve been deep in study and creation. If you’ve checked in anyway, thank you. I really appreciate your continued interest and support.
A lot has been happening behind the scenes. Over the past year, I’ve continued to publish and showcase work across media art and sound performances, generative projects, and large-scale 3D-printed sculptures and furniture pieces. I’ve shared work through Ftarri, XLab, TEI`2025 in France, completed an artwork installation at Disney through the accelerator program, collaborated on three papers, and spent time developing a large-scale architectural design that’s quietly tying many of these threads together. Additionally, I’ve been building an AI backend for a robotic microfactory—supporting fabrication, sensing, and data-driven iteration. I’ll share some images from this year’s work here.
Being based in Tokyo has helped me focus deeply this year. The city moves quickly but also offers moments of quiet, and that balance has shaped my thinking about sound, systems, and collective behavior. My current research explores how groups of small sound-making units can listen to their surroundings in very simple ways—focusing on overall activity, rhythm, and change over time—rather than trying to fully “understand” sound. Each unit forms a rough impression of its local environment, and these impressions gradually influence one another without any central control. Listening and sound-making happen on different timescales, keeping the system flexible and lightweight, and from these small local interactions, larger sonic patterns begin to emerge, shaped by the space, the people within it, and time itself.
One small tradition I’ve maintained: throughout the year, I put aside tracks I like on SoundCloud into a bin. At the end of the year, I share it—offering a raw snapshot of what I’ve been listening to as the work fluctuates.
Here’s the 2025 music bin (link below). Enjoy!
In 2026, I plan to write a bit more—short posts, images, and notes as things unfold.
Thanks for sticking around.
~Mikhail
PS
If you’d like to support my work into 2026, I’ve added a link here:
I greatly appreciate the support.
