From CD-ROM to Digital Heritage: Revisiting Our CD-ROM Exhibition

CD-ROM. One click, one story (18-20 June 2026 at Rotondes)

Did you miss our CD-ROM exhibition at Rotondes (18-20 June 2026)? It is not too late to discover or revisit it.

While it was already possible to browse our timeline of CD-ROM, you can now also explore the exhibition through its visitor’s guide. It is available in both French and English, together with a selection of photographs documenting the exhibition spaces and installations.

For three days, three studios at Rotondes were transformed into an interactive journey through the history of the CD-ROM that allowed more than 120 visitors to rediscover its history through guided tours. Rather than attempting an impossible comprehensive history, the exhibition presented a series of milestones emerging from the research carried out within the CD-Histproject. Across four thematic sections, three of them occupying dedicated exhibition studios, it invited visitors to rediscover the CD-ROM as a technological, cultural, economic, industrial and social medium that shaped the multimedia turn of the 1990s.

Part of the team transforming the Rotondes’ studios into a travel back to the 90s

The exhibition combined hands-on retro-computing stations, original archival materials, and interactive installations. Visitors could explore historical hardware and software, consult original documentation and industrial sources, including archives from Philips and discover a selection of archived CD-ROMs preserved by partners such as the Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg (BnL). Bringing these diverse objects together made it possible to experience CD-ROMs not only as digital media but also as physical artefacts embedded in broader technological and cultural histories.

Posters related to bugs and afterlives of CD-ROMs.

Specifications of optical and compact discs in the first studio

The first studio, The CD-ROM Guide, introduced visitors to the technological and industrial landscape behind the medium, and placed CD-ROM within the families of optical and compacts discs. Beyond explaining standards and competing formats – including Philips’ CD-i, it highlighted the broader industrial ecosystem that supported the development of multimedia technologies, with some attention to Luxembourg in this history.

The second studio, Multimedia in the Making, explored how multimedia was produced, experienced, and imagined. Topics included the augmentation of original works (such as music on vinyl or movies on tape) with additional content, the many ubiquitous ways to interact with content, the visual exploration of spaces and collections on computers and video consoles, and the intense development of software, as well as the sharing cultures that defined the period.

The timeline and industrial corner. Picture by Cássia Takahashi Hosni
The history of Philips’ CD-i
Multimedia in the making : examples of shelves related to software and edutainment
Multimedia in the making : examples of shelves related to virtual visits and interactivity
Retro-computing at the cybercafé and partial reconstruction of the “Espace interactifs Europe” exhibition (1996)
From CD-ROMs as archives to archived CD-ROMS

The third studio focused on the afterlives of CD-ROMs. From sharing and burning discs to questions of preservation, obsolescence, and creative recycling, this section explored how CD-ROMs continue to exist beyond their original context. This mainly occurs through the work of online communities and projects hosted by non-profit and public organisations.

The visitor’s guide and photographs offer a small glimpse into an exhibition that sought to tell not just the history of a storage medium, but of an entire multimedia culture.