Rhizome (Editorial)

Digital Painting in LA and Beyond, the Set List

The Los Angeles event, co‑hosted by LACMA Digital Leaders and Ark/8, assembled a curated selection of works that the organizer classifies as digital painting, ranging from early Photoshop pieces to recent code‑generated art. Speakers and artists—including Bee Beep, Parker Ito, and Casey Reas—demonstrated how hand‑drawn, tablet‑based, and algorithmic techniques intersect. The program sparked questions about whether digital paintings must be created manually, if code‑based outputs qualify, and how AI‑generated imagery fits into the genre. Curatorial authority versus community definitions emerged as a central tension.