In relation to the Elektro Moskva film screened directly following his talk, Andrey Smirnov will give an overview of the artistic projects and activities in the USSR in the 1960-80s. During this period the history of the previous generations of artists and inventors was almost forgotten, instruments and art works were lost and destroyed, and the official culture and technologies related to the arts increasingly stagnated and degraded.

Despite this context, however, the artistic underground survived. The community included the Electronic Music Studio at the Skryabin Museum in Moscow (home of the ANS synthesizer) as well as many independent groups of artists and constructors that formed a kind of DIY culture in the 1970-80s, which attempted to build new musical tools and instruments that unavailable in the USSR.