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This text is an investigation into media culture, temporalities of media objects and planned obsolescence in the midst of ecological crisis and electronic waste. The authors approach the topic under the umbrella of media archaeology and aim to extend this historiographically oriented field of media theory into a methodology for contemporary artistic practice. Hence, media archaeology becomes not only a method for excavation of repressed and forgotten media discourses, but extends itself into an artistic method close to Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture, circuit bending, hardware hacking and other hacktivist exercises that are closely related to the political economy of information technology. The concept of dead media is discussed as “zombie media”—dead media revitalized, brought back to use, reworked.

In recent methodological scholarship on digital games, a strong connection is noted between ''platform studies'' and media archaeology. While platform studies has its critics, who primarily lament the limitations of the project, a recent spate of publications in the field suggests considerable dynamism in platform studies as the concept is further developed. This article argues that by examining platform studies from the perspective of media archaeology, it becomes apparent that platform studies establishes an ''epistemic threshold''. Additionally, platform studies is a historical method which both establish continuities and mark breaks with previous platforms and technologies. From the perspective of this threshold, this article explores epistemic questions that arise from how platform studies forms an archive, and how media archaeology can enrich the method's explicit concerns and engagements with technology and culture.