Digital Capture: Southern California and the Origins of the Pixel-Based Image World

Digital imaging was largely invented and developed in the research labs of Southern California during the Cold War and Space Race of the 1960s. Though digital imaging has become part of everyday life and popular culture, Digital Capture: Southern California and the Origins of the Pixel-Based Image World is the first exhibition about the beginnings of this technology. Through photography, video, key archival documents, and historical equipment, the exhibition explores the history of digital imaging over six decades, from 1962 to the present. Digital Capture offers visitors a rare opportunity to interact with early digital technologies, original software, and now-obsolete hardware. Works by 42 artists trace the ideological shifts that took place as digital technologies were adopted for artistic ends, including a new AI installation by Refik Anadol that uses the California Museum of Photography’s Keystone-Mast collection of stereoscopic photographs as its image base, and a website created by Los Angeles-based artist Peter Wu+ that functions as both an artwork within the exhibition and an online extension of it.