Hero Armor

Liza is Zakhar’s cousin. In 2025, she brought his photo to the Temple at Burning Man. Zakhar’s childhood friend came across it by chance and, through an incredible chain of coincidences, found her. That story became the beginning of Hero Armor. Since September 2025, Liza has developed and led the project at every stage: she built an international team, secured funding and partners, and leads press relations and all communication with Burning Man. She personally led the creation and installation of the piece, and after the playa organized its showings at RTIA Reno, Maker Faire Bay Area, the Ukrainian community event Mriya, and Decompression, while shaping the project’s future.

Engineer and developer. In Hero Armor he leads both the technical side and operations. On the technical side he is responsible for off-grid power and the lighting system. He wrote the custom firmware that runs the lighting inside the controller itself, with ten original effects, so the installation needs no computer to operate. He built the audio node that senses a visitor with a millimetre-wave radar and speaks to them, logging every encounter on its own. He also created the project's computational models — voltage drop across the lines, battery autonomy, LED layout and current distribution — 42 models in total, which generate the project's technical drawings automatically. On the operations side he ran procurement and orders, organised the logistics and transport of the installation, and assembled and dismantled it on site.