When someone powers on an Apple IIe computer, waves of sensory experiences wash over them. A glowing screen ripples and pixelated fonts appear. The computer whirs as the disk drive crunches. Your fingers tap dance across the keyboard, feeling every bit of pressure it takes to type out your name. The smell of dust with a hint of industrial plastic transports you to a shag carpeted office in 1985.

The Media Archaeology Lab (MAL) at CU Boulder unearths this experience in the basement of a cottage on Grandview Avenue. Nostalgia may seize a visitor’s attention, but it also opens the door to experience the physicality of decades-old media.  “We don’t live in a physical world, for the most part.” Explains Dr. Libi Rose Striegl, the managing director of the Media Archaeology Lab. “Phones don’t give you any tactile, physical responses.” 

This lack of physicality in modern technology might be the reason archaic media at the MAL is still recognizable. People crave a sensory experience with technology, different from the sleek, metallic, simplistic design that characterizes modern hardware. Vinyl has stood the test of time, and is making a resurgence with consumers. A quick Google of “mechanical keyboards” reveals an entire subculture of people who build, and sell, these classic-style 80’s computer accessories.

Students and researchers take the opportunity to use this functional, yet obsolete media to reflect on the trail forged towards modern technology. Dr. Striegl shared an insight from one of her favorite moments in the lab, where students were asked to interact with the media as if it were a modern user test. “In his post interaction interview, (he) said ‘It feels honest…interacting with it feels like exactly what it is on the surface.’” 

Across campus, this sentiment is taking form in creative expression at the WHAAAT!? Lab in the CU Atlas building. Danny Rankin, associate professor and director of the lab, encourages students to push the limits of creativity in game design. As he gestured toward a large, plush, anatomically correct stomach perched on a stick, he explained, “Some people approach game making almost like an art practice… and the physical, tactile nature of control and interface is a very visceral, primal place for that to start.” 

Rankin hopes that by experimenting outside their comfort zone, students will translate this immersive interaction to their eventual careers. “They're forced to make games that absolutely could not exist in the market. And then if they go out and actually work commercially, some of those ideas trickle into those things. And you gradually shape the type of things that are happening commercially,” he explained. 

In a way, the WHAAAT!? Lab is experimenting with the past that can be found at the Media Archaeology Lab. Generations of innovation have led to a convergence of technology, and uniform expectations for what media is supposed to look like. While the physicality of dated computers may be gone, consumers are returning to concrete mediums that can be felt outside of a phone screen, whether they’re digging it up, or creating it themselves.