HELL TREE cover final

Linda Green, a photographer and curator based in Berlin, speculates that ebooks may be creating a new art form.  From Policymic:

I just purchased my first piece of artwork the other day, for a whopping $1.99 on Amazon. It was HELL_TREE, an e-book by Petra Cortright that consists of writings and images from the artist’s computer desktop. I’ve been following the exploits of the Santa Barbara-based internet artist since I curated one of her videos at an exhibition in Berlin.HELL_TREE was released in a slew of summer releases by Badlands, a publishing house founded by artist Paul Chan in 2010 that makes “books in an expanded field.” Other titles from Badlands include Poems by Yvonne Rainer, available in digital form with audio and video files, and How to Download a Boyfriend, a group exhibition as an interactive e-book. 

When German literary critic and philosopher, Walter Benjamin, wrote in 1936 about the diminishing “aura” of the artwork and the new possibilities of media in the modern age of mechanical reproduction, he hadn’t yet encountered the Information Age. Internet and digital art, virtual museums (like in the Google Art Project), online art fairs, and “Art Genome” sites like Art.sy have made many wonder anew about the importance of physically viewing an original work of art, and the presence of public art institutions and museums. Although an e-book is no substitute for standing under the Louis Bourgeois’ enormous looming-spider sculpture, “Maman,” electronic media and digital art address our new, contemporary digital reality.

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