Audiovisual technician

NIKITA SHOKHOV

Queens, NY ***** 812-***-****

******.*******@*****.*** linkedin.com/nikitashokhov nikitashokhov.art CAREER SUMMARY

Creative Technologist • Video Producer • Artistic Director

An award-winning new media artist and filmmaker with 15+ years of industry practice who synthesizes compelling ideas and emerging media technologies for building never-before-seen visual experiences that inspire those intellectuals, creators, and inventors who foster the future of humanity.

An inquisitive ideator who thinks critically and constantly researches modern culture to avoid replication, eager to invent profoundly new visual storytelling concepts in coherence with cutting-edge creative technologies.

An extraordinary collaborator, friendly communicator, reliable and knowledgeable partner who can lead large production teams and has the will to complete creative projects in time. Delivering the highest possible quality, precision in execution, and meticulous attention to detail.

A recent Creative Technologies master's graduate with five years of game engine development experience, I am interested in real-time computer graphics, immersive cinematics, the interaction between live performance and virtual reality, and the revolutionary potential of Artificial Intelligence in procedural worldmaking.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

Art Direction

Team Leadership

Cultural Competency

Communication

Project Management

Critical Thinking

Digital Production

Digital Designs

Visual Direction

Mood Boards

New Media Art

Fine Art

Visual Storytelling

Easily Adaptable

Creative Problem Solving

Prototyping

Creative Research

Budget Management

Presentations

Reliability

Content Delivery

Team Culture

Audiovisual Systems

Creative Coding

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

IPURELAND, New York, NY 2018 – Present

Supporting cultural organizations through consulting, professional development, and producing digital experiences Artistic Director Video Producer Audiovisual Designer Augmented Reality Designer Leading one of the two core departments at the company - visual production - I champion Experience as the primary way to communicate ideas to audiences. As the company’s artistic director, I define its cultural agenda. I follow art, film, and theater scenes, participate in the top artist residencies, and expand my network.

● I produced various spatial cinematic experiences, collaborating with artists, companies, and institutions. I worked on long-term research-heavy and smaller, faster-iterated visual experiences that received awards, were covered in the press, and were exhibited internationally.

● Augmented Reality experiences are available publicly in the App Store: a volumetric music video, a drag club show, and a university educational piece about Hip Hop literature. VIRGINIA TECH, Blacksburg, VA January 2020 – August 2022 The Virginia Tech Institute For Creativity, Arts, And Technology (ICAT) advances research, innovation, and education by bringing faculty and students across disciplines together, providing funding, space, support, and expertise, and building mutually beneficial partnerships beyond campus.

Video Producer Volumetric Video Specialist Augmented Reality Designer At ICAT, I worked in the Experience department, researching Immersive Environments, Volumetric Video systems, and Augmented Reality development. As an expert video producer, I also benefited the academic community by creating multiple documentary films featuring collaborative projects between ICAT and various science and engineering departments of Virginia Tech.

● I achieved profoundly inventive results in building location-aware interactive mise-en-scène and procedural character behavior interacting with the physical environment in Augmented Reality mobile applications. The broader scientific and game development communities benefit from this achievement as I published the results of my research.

● I achieved the construction of a unique cutting-edge volumetric video capture facility in the main library on the campus. It is now open to facilitating Virginia Tech scholars and faculty.

● As an Augmented Reality designer and volumetric video producer, I developed and distributed the “Hip Hop Lit” app for the Creative Writing department. This AR experience highly diversified the education experience and is now a part of the "Black American Literature" curriculum.

● As a volumetric video producer and Unity developer, I collaborated with New York-based Rada Studio. Managing a 3D video and photogrammetry production crew, I achieved capturing the highest quality materials. Based on this footage and my R&D in Shader and Visual Effects, Rada is building the

“Gone To Mars” Virtual Reality experience.

LOREM IPSUM CORP, Moscow, Russia August 2019 – November 2019 Headquartered in New York, it is a group of global content creation companies engaged in immersive experience design, museum planning, marketing, and film production.

Digital Media Designer Audiovisual Designer Creative Developer I joined the audiovisual department and achieved outstanding results in designing, brainstorming, prototyping, and inventing large-scale media installations for public museums’ audiences.

● One of the most appealing assignments for a major science museum in the country was researching and prototyping several exhibition objects that illustrate various physics and lighting phenomena on Earth and in Space. Research and production teams benefited from the 3D blueprints I have been imagining and rendering in 3D modeling software, real-time engine, and Visual Effects components.

● I have satisfied many requests from different company departments to make digital designs of media installations used for client presentations: technical design, precise optical, light, and resolution calculations, budgeting of projections and video walls, and research in optical and digital holographic solutions. These tasks required lots of creativity and research into the latest trends in video mapping, industrial projection, display, and playback systems. CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF THE ARTS, Santa Clarita, CA September 2018 – May 2019 Renowned internationally as a game-changer in the education of professional artists. An all-inclusive community for a diversity of authentic voices, offering comprehensive degree programs in the visual, performing, media, and literary arts. Video Producer Theater Producer Virtual Reality Designer Post-Production Specialist Broadcasting Specialist Cinema Projectionist

I am proud to be a part of this fruitful community where I was inventing new, diving into the most profound research, experimenting, collaborating, and having multiple campus jobs simultaneously. All my jobs were related to visual production, cinematic theory and practice, the mixture of emerging digital and old analog technologies, live performance, and digital worlds.

● Collaborating with the School of Theater and School of Music students, I staged an inventive large-scale live theater Virtual Reality hybrid, “The Last Dodo.”

● I achieved multiple international awards for the Virtual Reality experience “Klaxon. My Dear Sweet Friend”. It became possible through mutually inspirational collaborations in large CalArts teams and advancing my skillset in digital cinema production workflows, sound production, and various 3D modeling and animation software tools.

SELF-EMPLOYED, Russia - USA 2011 – 2018

Independent Artist, Photographer

As an independent artist, I participated in 50+ group and solo shows in art galleries, foundations, museums, and art biennales, including commissions from cultural institutions worldwide. As a professional photographer, I worked on hundreds of editorial, fashion, documentary, commercials, journalist, studio portrait, political, social, and theatrical commissions worldwide with photography agencies, magazines, publishing houses, press, event venues, cultural, academic, diplomatic institutions, and private clients.

● Multiple years of photography and show installation practice allowed me to master my visual creativity, artistic self-expression, and cultural-social competency, understand the media, materials, cameras, optics, production studio work, and lighting, advance the industry’s technical knowledge, and work with architecture in site-specific shows.

EDUCATION

Master of Fine Arts (STEM MFA): Creative Technologies Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA (2020 - 2022) Affiliations: College of Architecture, Arts, and Design; Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology; Center for Human-Computer Interaction; Applied Research in Immersive Experiences and Simulations; Computer Science; Creative Writing; Cube Fest; ACM IMX

Master of Fine Arts (MFA): Film and Video California Institute of the Arts, Santa Clarita, CA (2018 - 2019, transferred)

Affiliations: School of Film/Video; Character Animation; Experimental Animation; Center for Integrated Media; CalArts Game Makers Club; School of Theater, School of Critical Studies; Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance; Herb Alpert School of Music; Bijou Fest; Film/Video Showcase at REDCAT; CalArts Expo Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA): Photography and Multimedia Rodchenko Art School, Moscow, Russia

(2010 - 2013)

Vocational degree: Cinematography in Film and Television Sverdlov Film Studio, Ekaterinburg, Russia

(2008 - 2009)

AWARDS, ARTIST RESIDENCIES

International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) Artist Residency, Brooklyn, NY (2023) Curatorial Program for Research: Hello New York! Artist Residency, Brooklyn, NY (2023) FIVARS: Grand Jury Prize "Klaxon. My Dear Sweet Friend", Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories, Canada (2023)

DOK Leipzig: Official Selection in Extended Reality "Dragzina," International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film, Germany (2022)

The 18th Athens Digital Arts Festival: Official Selection "Dragzina," Greece (2022) Cannes XR Development Showcase: Finalist "Klaxon. My Dear Sweet Friend", Cannes XR with Kaleidoscope, France - USA (2020)

The Watermill Center International Summer Program Theater Residency, Water Mill, NY (2016) World Press Photo: Staged Portrait "Utrish," World Press Photo, Netherlands (2014) SCHOLARLY WORK

“ORIENTATION DEVICE: poiesis of documentary volumetric video for augmented reality; location-aware interactive mise-en-scène; applied queer phenomenology; the potential of procedural worldmaking in the future,” Master of Fine Arts thesis, Virginia Tech, USA (2022) TECHNICAL SKILLS

Unity Engine: XR,

worldbuilding, physics,

procedural character

animation, shader graph

programming, VFX graph

programming, procedural

sound, UX/UI, volumetric

video streaming, lighting,

game design, timeline,

cinematics, performance

optimization for specific

platforms, debugging,

non-real-time rendering,

character AI

Unreal engine

C# (Unity)

Apple: ARKit, Xcode, App

Store publishing and

distribution, iOS mobile app

development

Autodesk: Maya, Motion

Builder

Blender

Character Animation and

Rigging

3D scanning: LiDAR,

meshing and mesh editing,

point-cloud, industrial and

mobile scanners,

photogrammetry

Neural Radiance Fields

(NeRF)

Depthkit Studio volumetric

video

Davinci Resolve Studio

Adobe: Photoshop,

Premiere Pro, After Effects,

InDesign

Cinema 4D

DAW: ProTools, Davinci

Fairlight, Adobe Audition

Live action cinema

production:

cinematography, optics and

lenses, studio rigging,

chroma-keying, lighting,

slow-motion, 360 video

Digital cinema and machine

vision camera systems

Video post-production:

editing, color grading,

sound design, VFX, motion

graphics

Motion capture: Noitom,

OptiTrack

Previsualization and

prototyping

Broadcasting and video

live-streaming

XR head-mounted displays:

Microsoft Hololens, Oculus,

HTC Vive

Electric power management

in visual production systems

Data management

Projection systems

Datapath video wall control

Metaverse development:

Spatial.io, Mozilla Hubs

Video conferencing: Zoom,

Google Meet

Azure Kinect DK for

interactivity

Video encoding and

optimization for specific

tasks and platforms

Version control and cloud

collaborative tools: Plastic

SCM, Unity Teams,

Perforce, GitHub, Notion,

Discord, Slack, Google,

Dropbox

Spatial Computing

development: AR, VR, XR

Generative AI: Midjourney,

Runway, ChatGPT

Photography production

and post-production: studio

and field, analog and digital,

large-medium-35mm

formats, impulse lighting,

documentary and staged

Technical art

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