Configuring the Virtual Museum/Archive: CD-ROMs and the Rise of Born-Digital Infrastructure

From avant-garde experiments to informational techno-utopias, the concept of a virtual museum/archive/library was envisioned as a means to democratize culture and knowledge (Huhtamo, 2013). The advent of the World Wide Web has effectively actualized and, to some extent, trivialized it. Today, such digital repositories are recognized as distinct born-digital media, which not only reshape the goût de l’archive but also profoundly alter our engagement with cultural memory, knowledge, and history (Ernst, 2012). However, on the intricate path from analog endeavors to full-fledged born-digital infrastructures, there lies a page of history that is not so well explored. Virtual museums and archives initially became technically possible and widely disseminated thanks to CD-ROM technology. From the first Apple Museum released in 1992 onwards, CD-ROM technologies set the boundaries and possibilities for what it meant to be a “museum without walls”. This presentation examines the media-archaeological case of such CDROM based, driven, and born collections. Drawing on a corpus of early CD-ROMs, it seeks to trace how this media functioned, which aspects of “museumness” or “archiveness” were retained or altered when moved to CD-ROM, as well as the implications of this hybrid media for accessing and representing both digitized and born-digital cultural artifacts.