Extra Credit Event Blog 1

Extra Credit Blog: LACMA

I attended the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art or more commonly known as LACMA which is home to many different exhibits that change every couple of months. Today I visited an exhibit titled Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982 which explores computer technology through art, from a time before the technology boom. By focusing on the years between 1952 and 1982, we can really see how far we have come and how our technology and art have both grown immensely and flourished during that age and the time to come. This exhibit also displayed the intersection of technology and how it related to the general public displaying fax machines and other devices that were commonplace to humans during this time.

The image above features screenprints by Eduardo Paolozzi of geometric patterns fused with popular imagery of the time such as Disney’s Donald Duck or Goofy or Cold War Weaponry. This exemplifies the ideas (people’s entertainment, hopes, and fears) people experienced during this time through the new technology of screenprinting and mathematical patterns in the art.

This exhibit was extremely interesting to me because it covered an age of technology that was before my time. It acted as a sort of time machine to transport me into the world and ideas of the 60s and 70s displaying what was already available in terms of technology and what their ideas and imaginations of the future entailed. I would definitely recommend attending this exhibit and the LACMA in general because it is extremely accessible and an interesting way to enjoy art. On Tuesdays, after 3:00 it is free for all students and it allows access to multiple exhibits and it is relatively close to campus. I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibit Coded and all of the others as well. 

Citations

Ascott, Roy. "Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision." Studio International, vol. 179, no. 920, 1970, pp. 6-11. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44485570.

Friedberg, Anne. "Artificial Intelligence and the End of Work." October, vol. 22, 1982, pp. 3-41. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/778479.

Hanson, Walter. "Computer Art." Leonardo, vol. 4, no. 4, 1971, pp. 343-344. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1572620.

Lippard, Lucy R. "The Aesthetics of the Machine." Art International, vol. 16, no. 7, 1972, pp. 23-27. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30601161.

Weibel, Peter. "From Art Technology to Cultural Technology." Leonardo, vol. 37, no. 5, 2004, pp. 389-393. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1577260.