The ancient Greeks used a single term, ‘techne’, to refer to both technical and artistic practices. It was only in the modern era that art gained autonomy, becoming the subject of a philosophical discipline in its own right: aesthetics. However, the advent of the mass media and, subsequently, digital media, has brought art closer to technology, calling its autonomy into question. In this context, certain fundamental philosophical questions about art are once again taking centre stage: why art? What is the purpose of art? What is the role of art in a technological society such as ours? The traditional answer emphasises the uniqueness of art, highlighting the essential difference between works of art and technical artefacts. The growing interplay between art and technology, however, prompts us to question this assertion and pursue an alternative strategy. 

The hypothesis is that works of art belong to a technical category that has hitherto been overlooked: that of experiential artefacts, whose function is to evoke experiences. Art is separate from technology only if one focuses on artefacts such as drills or lathes, whose function is to produce concrete effects. However, once experiential artefacts are recognised, it becomes possible to fruitfully link art to technology, by rethinking art forms as techniques for generating different types of experiences. 

The PEA project introduces the philosophy of experiential artefacts as a new field of inquiry in which the relationship between art and technology can be adequately theorised, thereby offering a new set of conceptual tools for historical and empirical research. This will be achieved through a four-part methodology, in which aesthetics and the philosophy of mind analyse the experiences that experiential artefacts are designed to evoke, whilst metaphysics and the philosophy of technology investigate the structure by virtue of which they perform this function. 

The PEA project redefines works of art as technical artefacts that we value for the way in which they enable us to enrich, share and coordinate our experiences.