Petra Cortright

Petra Cortright (July 19, 1986) is a Los Angeles, California based net artist.

Biography

Petra Cortright was born in Santa Barbara, California. She studied at Parsons The New School for Design in New York and California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Work

Petra Cortright makes videos, images, and paintings that reflect on online experiences. Her first video, vvebcam (2007), has been canonized and discussed in academia as an important work in the history of video art. In vvebcam Cortight films herself while playing with the special effects built into the webcam software used to make the video. It is often noted that her physicality in vvebcam, as captured by the webcam, mirrors that of the work's viewer. vvebcam has also been heralded as shortly predating the rise of the "self-portraiture practice known as the selfie". On Saturday, December 10, 2011, vvebcam (2007) was removed by YouTube because of Cortright's extensive use of "offensive" key words.

In 2011 Cortright collaborated with Ilia Ovechkin to create Video Catalog, a work where the monetary value of her videos is determined by an algorithm based on YouTube views.