Y111 Katya Custom Waterfall Info

Dmitri Volkov was never a conventional circuit designer. Trained as a hydroacoustician in St. Petersburg, he spent the 1990s designing underwater listening devices for military applications. After emigrating to Germany in 2004, he pivoted hard toward art — but his obsession with fluid dynamics, chaos theory, and stochastic resonance never faded.

By 2015, Volkov had built a modest reputation in the DIY modular scene for his “Liquid Logics” series — modules that used physical water columns as variable capacitors. The Y111 Katya Custom Waterfall, however, was different. It was a commission, not a commercial product.

The commission came from Katya Sokolova, a Ukrainian-born sound artist living in Berlin. She wanted a module that could generate the exact acoustic and electrical signature of a specific waterfall: the Manavai Cascade in southern Ukraine’s Crimean Mountains, which she had recorded in 2013, months before the region became inaccessible due to geopolitical conflict. Y111 Katya Custom Waterfall

Her request: “Build me a machine that sounds like that place. Not a recording. A living model.”

Volkov accepted.

The module has 10 inputs and 14 outputs — all normalized in unexpected ways. The main outputs:

Internal normalization means that patching nothing yields a self-generating “default waterfall” — Volkov’s approximation of the Manavai Cascade at medium flow, spring season. Dmitri Volkov was never a conventional circuit designer

The Y111 Katya is engineered for minimal upkeep. With the optional KatyaClean robotic descaler (an add-on module), the system:

Annual professional maintenance is recommended for the VFD pump and LED drivers. Owners report 20+ years of faultless operation. The module has 10 inputs and 14 outputs