Petra Cortright - By turns technical, absurd, tender, and urgent: an unfiltered recording of Cortright's thoughts during the course of her days. To-do lists conflate with poems. Motivational pronouncements interlace with inflammatory tweets. Texts and images pile and compile without any particular structure other than an unspoken directive to keep everything moving and formless

Petra Cortright, HELL_TREE, E-book

http://petracortright.com/videocatalog

HELL_TREE is the first e-book by acclaimed net artist Petra Cortright. Since 2005, Cortright has produced a unique body of work that evokes the precarious nature of life in the age of media saturation. HELL_TREE consists of a series of writings by Cortright that exists solely within the context of her computer desktop. By turns technical, absurd, tender, and urgent, HELL_TREE is an unfiltered recording of Cortright's thoughts during the course of her days. To-do lists conflate with poems. Motivational pronouncements interlace with inflammatory tweets. Texts and images pile and compile without any particular structure other than an unspoken directive to keep everything moving and formless. HELL_TREE embodies this spirit of formlessness to create a moving written work that can be read and looked at in the same instance. It is an intimate portrait of the artist as a young medium.

"[HELL_TREE] is not so much 'text' as a machine-warped portrait of geek girl as artsy cyborg in which she drags you onto the hard drive and abandons you to make your own way" — Bruce Sterling

Reading the book is like finding a lost, sticker-covered iPad, whose owner left its screen bewitched with hairy stains from her fur-lined Meret Oppenheim coffee cup. You kind of want to give it back, because it’s got her e-mail and some personal pics and all that, but, well, old iPads don’t work that well anymore, and besides, she already got another one and moved to another town. - Artforum

Petra Cortright (born 1986) is an artist who lives and works in Santa Barbara, California. She studied at Parsons School of Design in New York and California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She is a member of the Nasty Nets Internet Surfing Club, Loshadka Internet Surfing Club and Computers Club. She has exhibited internationally in many international shows including: New Museum, New York, 2008; Spencer Brownstone gallery, New York, 2009; The Sundance International Film Festival, 2009; Artnews Projects, Berlin, Germany, 2009; Preteen Gallery, Mexico City, 2011; Gloria Maria Gallery, Milan, Italy, 2010; and the Venice Biennale, Internet Pavilion, Venice, 2009. Hell_Tree is Cortright's first e-book.


What initially appears to be a collection of unintelligible code, upon closer examination, reveals a unique manifestation of contemporary selfhood. Petra, in Hell Tree, manages to collect, in the form of computer screenshots, images and text that are as relateable as they are strange. Moments of poetic clarity interject notes and rambles full of uncorrected typos, and the entire work forces the reader into a voyeuristic role. But soon enough you're looking in a fun house mirror. In these technologically dependent times, when our laptops have long been extensions of our selves, Petra's method of expression feels uncomfortably intimate, but remains effectively communicative. This book is totally worth your exploration! - Hova art lover





http://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/sep/7/artist-profile-petra-cortright/

E-books Are the Future of Art: How Paperless Publishing is Creating a New Art Form


http://www.policymic.com/articles/11064/e-books-are-the-future-of-art-how-paperless-publishing-is-creating-a-new-art-form