VVEBCAM (2007)

Originally published on YouTube in 2007 Petra Cortrights VVEBCAM highlights the conditions of watching video online Her passive surveillance of her videoscreen is mirrored by the viewers own experience at that very moment who is necessarily also consuming online content as they watch the work Cortright complicates the dynamic of disengaged onlooking however by inserting a collection of animations that flash across the video Default effects taken from the 20 webcam she used to record the work running the gamut from cats to lightning bolts literally animate the otherwise nonactive scene Her passive stare mixed with these flashing images lend the video a hypnotic quality further accentuated by the background music Ceephaxs Summer Frosby playing in Cortrights iTunes as she filme Rhizome