Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982

(Los Angeles, CA—January, 10, 2023) The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982, an exhibition that explores artistic practices in relation to the rise of computer technology and consciousness in the age of the mainframe, a period when computers evolved from elite military machines used to calculate missile projections and decrypt code into central operating fixtures in governmental, corporate, and educational institutions around the world. The exhibition’s chronological parameters begin in 1952, the date of the earliest purely aesthetic image made on a computer (analog), and end in 1982, when the personal computer took center stage and replaced the mainframe as the machine of the future.

This exhibition was curated by Leslie Jones, Curator, Prints and Drawings at LACMA.