We invite contributions that revisit the history of media studies in ways that draw attention to the importance of such media-based material experiments, non-traditional methodologies and practice-based initiatives. This colloquium is an occasion to revisit and restore the role of things and experimentation in the making of theory.

How does an attention to the history of experimental practices in media theory contribute to a reconfiguration of the histories, archives and futures of media studies? How does this call into question the disciplinary divides in the early days of media studies and its present manifestations? Contributions are encouraged to take up the marginal, little-known, failed, forgotten, controversial or neglected experiments in the history of media studies. We are seeking participants interested in revisiting the precursors, proto-theories and visionaries of the recent practice-based paradigms in media studies (including critical making, media archaeology or research-creation, to name a few.)

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Experimental educational technologies: teaching machines, programmed learning, educational film;
• Radio, Film and Television production as methods of critique and conceptual development during the long twentieth century;
• Theorizing (en)coding: from technical education to coding in the classroom;
• Theoretical paradigms which have articulated in one way or another practice-based epistemologies;
• The role of things in the epistemology of specific media theorists (i.e. the films of Charles and Ray Eames, Kittler’s modular synthesizer and Simondon’s television set.)