The CD-ROM Cabinet: the first six months

Sandra Fauconnierfokky@fauconnier.nlTwitter @sanseveria

Media Art Histories 2013: RENEWOctober 11, 2013, Riga, Latvia

http://www.fauconnier.nl/fokky/cd-rom-cabinet

Remember these?

The CD-ROM Cabinet?

Wikipedia:

A cabinet of curiosities was an encyclopedic collection in Renaissance Europe of types of objects whose categorical boundaries were yet to be defined. They were also known by various names such as Cabinet of Wonder, and in German Kunstkammer (“art room”) or Wunderkammer (“wonder-room”).

Thank you, Hicham Khalidi !

Cabinet, anonymous, ca. 1660-1670, collection Rijksmuseum Amsterdamhttp://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.356616

Ole Worm’s cabinet of curiosities, from Museum Wormianum, 1655.

Who?

• Sandra Fauconnier – research, emulation, imaging, documentation

• Annet Dekker – research, organisation, publication

• Ben Fino-Radin – CD-ROM hackathon and general feedback

• Hicham Khalidi – the name • Annette Wolfsberger, Gisela Domschke, Arie Altena, Gaby Wijers, Aram Bartholl, Robert Sakrowski – support and feedback

How ? Quick & Dirty

• 6 months, 1 day/week• Low-hanging fruit• Mainly Dutch focus• Hands on “House, Yard & Kitchen Approach”

• Focus on what works• Use of existing tools and platforms

• Balance between easy & useful

http://www.pinterest.com/trnstlntk/cd-rom-art-of-the-1990s/

Inventory: 82 art CD-ROMs in our surroundings (mainly NIMk, V2_, private collections)…

… dating from 1994 to 2001.

Other sources…

Contact Zones: The Art of CD-ROMExhibition at Cornell UniversityMarch-April 1999Curated by Tim Murray

https://contactzones.cit.cornell.edu/

Burning the InterfaceExhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, AustraliaMarch-July 1996Curated by Mike Leggett

http://legart.drupalgardens.com/projects/burning-interfaceinternational-artists-cd-rom

A few are ported to the web:

George LegradyAn Anecdoted Archive from the Cold WarCD-ROM 1997, ported to the web by the Daniel Langlois Foundation 2005http://www.fondation-langlois.org/legrady/

Zoe BeloffBeyondCD-ROM 1997, ported to the web by the artist (?) 2009http://www.zoebeloff.com/beyond/

CD-ROM hackathon, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, 12-13 December 2012

Led by Ben Fino-Radin(then Digital Conservator at Rhizome)

http://www.baltanlaboratories.org/borndigital/cd-rom-hackathon/

http://www.baltanlaboratories.org/borndigital/reports-images-video-and-texts/

2012 Revival

Aram Bartholl & Robert Sakrowski: DVD Dead Drop #2: INSERT DISC22 Sept – 27 Oct 2012Museum of Moving Image NYC

User-Unfriendly InterfaceJosephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski, 1994-

1996

http://lx.sysx.org/?page_id=20

Documentation ‘packages’…

• .iso disk image• Scanned pictures of sleeve/booklet• Documentation video• Some screenshots

www.archive.org - search “cd-rom cabinet”

Same principles: XFR STN (New Museum, NYC, July 2013)

The Netherlands: Mediamatic Magazine

Work To Do still…

• Voyager CD-ROMs -> US organisation to tackle this?

• artintact series -> ZKM to tackle this?• Many key pieces not yet covered: antirom,

audiorom, the Blam! series… -> let’s make this a distributed effort?

• Difficult CD-ROMs were skipped (multi-disc, Quicktime, broken copies)

• Inventory not complete• Art historical overview is due (predecessor

to ebooks, apps, interactive storytelling; the broader context of ‘intimate’ pieces for common personal computing devices)

I would recommend…

• Sustainability and a distributed approach – don’t put it in our own silos, but use existing platforms that (hopefully) will last a while.

• First step: make it (easily) accessible (=downloadable) and findable by ‘civilians’

• Simple, readable documentation

Thank you!

http://cdromcabinet.tumblr.com

http://www.fauconnier.nl/fokky/cd-rom-cabinet

http://www.pinterest.com/trnstlntk/cd-rom-art-of-the-1990s/

fokky@fauconnier.nl

@sanseveria