Collecting the virtual: acquiring digital media, by Beth Jackson (2001)

In order to arrive at processes for acquiring digital media, we need to explore the complex inter-relationship between art, technology, and the museum. I would like to begin by exploring a work of multimedia art which is held in the Griffith University Collection, namely the CD ROM, Virgin with Hard Drive (1999) by young Brisbane-based artist Lucy Francis.

Virgin with Hard Drive adopts its narrative and aesthetic from popular culture and science fiction. We enter the work in the passive, voyeuristic mode of the consumer – we are given instructions, advertisements, and told we have won a trip to Earth. The year, we are told, is 2082, the Earth has become a giant museum, looked after by drones or keepers who perform the role of cataloguer and conservator. It has been this way since 2010, when Cultural Reorganisation occurred – the event that stopped history. We are invited to travel back to earth and live life for one week as a keeper. In the next level we read the diary of one keeper, sent to Earth to restore the precious treasures of the past, but who finds greater beauty and pleasure in destruction.