Nowak earned his undergraduate degree from the University of the Arts (UdK), Berlin in 2007, and studied under German conceptual artist Lothar ­Baumgarten, and is the recipient of several scholarships, including one for a sculpture course under Xiang Jing at Normal University in Shanghai, China. Among Nowak's notable recent projects is "Panzer" (tank), a sound system and armoured vehicle which was exhibited at CTM Festival in 2012. Other recent works include a diverse range of "Mobile Boosters" (portable, flexible sound systems developed in response to the increasing anonymity of life in virtual space) and "Echo," a sound installation with an anechoic chamber in which so-called "echo drones" interact with visitors, recording their speech and playing it back in different ways.  In 2014, he was awarded the GASAG Art Prize in cooperation with Berlinische Galerie, a prize honouring an artistic position at the interface of art, science, and technology.

An interview with Nowak, conducted by fellow Berlin-based artist Heimo Lattner, appears in the 2015 edition of CTM Magazine under the title "Ambivalent Sounds and Systems."