The document summarizes the creation of "The CD-ROM Cabinet", a project to document and preserve CD-ROM artworks from the 1990s and early 2000s. It describes collecting 82 CD-ROM artworks over 6 months, documenting them through disk images, photos, and video. It notes efforts to make some works accessible online and a hackathon to experiment with obsolete formats. It recommends a distributed and sustainable approach to ongoing documentation and accessibility of the artworks.

1. The CD-ROM Cabinet:
the first six months
Sandra Fauconnier
fokky@fauconnier.nl
Twitter @sanseveria
Media Art Histories 2013: RENEW
October 11, 2013, Riga, Latvia
http://www.fauconnier.nl/fokky/cd-rom-cabinet

2. Remember these? 

4. 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
Amsterdam
http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.356616
Ole Worm’s cabinet of curiosities, from Museum Wormianum,
1655.

5. 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

6. 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

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

8. Inventory: 82 art CD-ROMs in our surroundings (mainly NIMk, V2_, private collections)…
… dating from 1994 to 2001.

9. Other sources…
Contact Zones: The Art of CD-ROM
Exhibition at Cornell University
March-April 1999
Curated by Tim Murray
https://contactzones.cit.cornell.edu/
Burning the Interface
Exhibition at the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Sydney,
Australia
March-July 1996
Curated by Mike Leggett
http://legart.drupalgardens.com/pro

10. A few are ported to the web:
George Legrady
An Anecdoted Archive from the Cold War
CD-ROM 1997, ported to the web by the
Daniel Langlois Foundation 2005
http://www.fondation-langlois.org/legrady/
Zoe Beloff
Beyond
CD-ROM 1997, ported to the web by the
artist (?) 2009
http://www.zoebeloff.com/beyond/

11. CD-ROM hackathon, Van Abbemuseum
Eindhoven, 12-13 December 2012
Led by Ben Fino-Radin
(then Digital Conservator at Rhizome)
http://www.baltanlaboratories.org/born
digital/cd-rom-hackathon/
http://www.baltanlaboratories.org/born
digital/reports-images-video-and-
texts/

12. 2012 Revival
Aram Bartholl & Robert Sakrowski:
DVD Dead Drop #2: INSERT DISC
22 Sept – 27 Oct 2012
Museum of Moving Image NYC

14. User-Unfriendly Interface
Josephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski, 1994-
1996
http://lx.sysx.org/?page_id=20

15. Documentation ‘packages’…
• .iso disk image
• Scanned pictures of sleeve/booklet
• Documentation video
• Some screenshots

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

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

19. The Netherlands: Mediamatic Magazine

20. 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)

21. 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

22. 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