Petra Cortright is an interdisciplinary artist connected to the Net Art movement and the next generation of post-Internet artists. She brings digital culture into both physical and conceptual spaces, treating the internet as both her medium and her subject. Cortright often finds images online and transforms them with software like Photoshop. By manipulating, layering, and distorting these digital materials, she blurs ideas of authorship, originality, and circulation in today’s image-driven culture.

Cortright first gained widespread attention for her video works, which she shared on YouTube before showing them in galleries. These videos explore the creative possibilities of digital tools and how virtual spaces shape identity. A key example, vvebcam (2007), records Cortright using webcam effects to create a self-portrait shaped by software filters and online visibility. The piece explores surveillance, performance, and the normalization of self-broadcasting. YouTube removed the video in 2011 because she used provocative keywords.

She also investigates online systems of value and circulation. In Video Catalog (2011), created with Ilia Ovechkin, Cortright built an algorithm that assigned monetary value to her videos based on YouTube view counts, directly linking online attention to artistic worth. She examines digital representations of the body as well. In Vicky Deep in Spring Valley (2012), she combined footage from commercial software showing virtual dancers into surreal, layered scenes resembling animated desktop imagery.

Cortright continues to experiment across media and contexts. She exhibited at Depart Foundation in 2015 and participated in the 2013 Frieze Art Fair in London. She also collaborates in the fashion world, notably with Stella McCartney, applying glitch effects and video manipulation to present clothing in digitally experimental ways.