ABSTRACT
In the previous two chapters we have looked at how both the automated and the numerical qualities of digital media played against the workings and discourse of the museum. In each case we have seen points of fundamental incompatibility: the numerical reductionism in an environment that privileged materialism; and the emphasis on systematisation and standardisation on curatorial practices that were localised and idiosyncratic. Working alongside these histories, however, we have also highlighted the points at which the concept of the museum and the functionality of the computer synchronised, specifi - cally in terms of the role of simulation and display within each, and of how both worked to store, index and connect data. In this chapter we shall take the third of Manovich’s principles of new media – modu larity and its composition as discrete blocks of content which can be reordered or dispersed. Here, as in previous and subsequent chapters, we will resist building a single narrative, working instead to draw out the contrasting stories of compatibility and incompatibility. We shall begin by considering how the modular nature of digital media (networkable and fragmentary) did not sit well – at least at fi rst – against the singularity privileged by museums. As we shall see, new media’s ability to disaggregate had awkward implications for museums – particularly in terms of the ideas of the museum ‘visit’ and the museum as ‘venue’.
