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Schedule as of May 16, 2022 - subject to change

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LIVESTREAMS : A and B


ON DEMAND VIDEOS (previous days)
 
Friday May 29, 2026 11:00am - 11:30am CEST
This article examines open-reel tape recorders marketed
under the “Yupiter” brand as a key technology of everyday
life in late Soviet Ukraine; as a material foundation
for the formation of a personal acoustic environment in the
Ukrainian SSR. The study aims to reconstruct the
“biography” of the device, including its design, serial
production ramp-up, distribution,; use. It shows how the
institutional constraints of a planned economy;
defense-sector priorities were translated into domestic
regimes of listening; recording. Methodologically, the
article combines approaches from sound studies, the history
of technology,; the history of everyday life,
supplemented by concepts of the “domestication” of
technology, DIY culture,; “phonographic labor.” The
source base includes internal documents of the Kyiv
“Kommunist” plant (annual reports, explanatory memoranda,
plans,; quality-related materials for 1968-1976),
interdepartmental reviews; programmatic materials of the
sector, technical handbooks; instructions, as well as
oral interviews with users. Bringing together the “upper”
level of managerial reporting; the “lower” level of user
experience makes it possible to identify a gap between
quality as a planning category; quality as a daily
practice: repairability, shortages of parts; tape,
re-recording,; selective choice of media were more the
norm than the exception. The article demonstrates that the
“fine-tuning” of tape recorders became institutionalized
through networks of amateur knowledge; informal service,
while fluctuating availability (shortage; overstock)
shaped the social geography of purchase. Ultimately,
“Yupiter” emerges not as a symbol of progress or nostalgia,
but as a material trace of late-socialist modernization -
one that helps integrate the Ukrainian case into
international debates on media materiality, listening,;
the politics of audibility. Particular attention is paid to
the temporality of the object: the extension of “Yupiter’s”
normative life cycle through repair; re-recording, as
well as its “outliving” of the Soviet system in the 1990s.
This makes it possible to interpret the tape recorder as a
carrier of acoustic memory; an indicator of social
hierarchies of access to technology. The findings refine
the understanding of shortage not as mere lack, but as an
everyday regime in the life of things.
Authors
avatar for Rostyslav Konta

Rostyslav Konta

Professor, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
Professor at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Ukraine) working in the fields of cultural anthropology, ethnology, history of science and technology, and sound studies. My research focuses on everyday life, music, media, and technology in Eastern Europe, especially in... Read More →
Friday May 29, 2026 11:00am - 11:30am CEST
Aud 43 Technical University of Denmark Asmussens Alle, Building 303A DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby Denmark

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