Rethinking technical objects: Hands-on creative practices with historical media

Technological changes have intensified cycles of consumption and obsolescence, while dominant narratives of digital innovation continue to obscure the material, ecological, and historical continuities of media technologies. In higher education institutions, this results in the accumulation of obsolete or partially functional technical objects, raising questions about sustainability, heritage, and the role of technical media in knowledge production. Grounded in media archaeology, critical design, and practice-based artistic research, this project presentation introduces the ongoing project Philosophical Media (PhilMe), developed at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. PhilMe explores how historical, obsolete, and broken technical objects can be reactivated as epistemic devices within higher educational contexts. The project has identified and catalogued over 300 objects, and established a pilot collection structured through a non-hierarchical typology that articulates museological, operational, and circular modes of engagement. This framework enables research, preservation, teaching, and hands-on creative experimentation, by putting the objects in the hands of the artistic and general community. The presentation will discuss selected practices and methods emerging from this framework, including research through repair and reuse, reflection on pedagogical media collections, and teaching methodologies that promote speculative engagement with the collection. Rather than illustrating predefined categories, these practices test their limits, foregrounding materiality, maintenance, and obsolescence as productive conditions for research and learning. By articulating theory, pedagogy, and curatorial practice, the project argues that reactivation and material sensitivity can support more situated, critical, and ecologically responsible engagements with technological systems, contributing to debates on electronic art, media heritage, and sustainable futures.