e-flux Criticism // Coded at LACMA and Difference Machines at UC Irvine
This March, OpenAI launched GPT-4: the most sophisticated iteration of the chatbot launched last year. Buried in a white paper concurrently (and quietly) released, OpenAI noted that when asked to solve a CAPTCHA during testing, GPT-4 pretended to be blind and hired a TaskRabbit worker to solve the test on its behalf.1 “No, I’m not a robot,” GPT-4 told the worker. The exchange makes clear that the societal effects of corporations vying for industry dominance, through the kinds of AI software that Hito Steyerl has called “statistical renderings,” are only just beginning to emerge.2 Opening during this new space race, “Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982” at LACMA meets this precarious moment with a review of the early collaborations between artists and computers.
“Coded” presents art made when access to computers was limited to the military, well-capitalized conglomerates, and select universities. By settling its focus on the late- to mid-century era, the show evades both novelty and the obsolescence traps common when technology is the subject. During this period, the outputs of mainframe programs were constrained to paper printouts, plotters, or microfilm: not the media we might now associate with digital art. But traditional materials were no guarantee for overcoming future shock. In interviews, wall exts, and the catalog, curator Leslie Jones highlights the critical reception to computer art’s debut, calling to mind current debates about authorship and accountability in computer-aided production. 3 Nagged by this history of refusal, the show takes pains to ground its argument in art history, linking computer art to Conceptualism, Minimalism, Op, and protest art.
Image credits: Installation view of “Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Image courtesy of LACMA
