We Live in Public is a documentary, which profiles an Internet pioneer that you will have never heard of: Josh Harris. He was one of the dot.com kids who gained unimaginable wealth in the 90s through Internet related businesses.
With hindsight it is easy to assume that all of these ‘pioneers’ had as much to offer culture and society as the majority of investment bankers and hedge fund managers who have lately become an unpopular breed. However watching this documentary unveils the uncanny foresight which this particular dot.com kid had when it came to foreseeing the way that technology would come to mediate and govern our existence.
From a purely entertainment point of view the documentary benefits from having as its protagonist a man who seems to be teetering between prophetic oracle, marginally narcissistic and slightly unbalanced. Either way he was willing to spend his vast fortune “like sand through the fingers of time” on an art project, Quiet: We Live in Public.
This is the most interesting part of the film by far. The art project struck me as part Big Brother (George Orwell novel and Channel 4 show) and part dystopian Cyberpunk fiction. Harris kitted out a disused warehouse in New York with small capsules for people to sleep/live in and any other necessities which would mean that an inhabitant would not need (or be able) to leave. Each capsule, the kitchen, the bathroom and all other living areas were covered by cameras and in each capsule was the ability to see every other camera feed in the warehouse. A voyeuristic heaven. Harris himself states that by committing to be a participant of this project that people will have access to everything they need or desire – food, drink, drugs, women, men – but the images that are captured “belong to us”. Initially what resulted for most inhabitants was a sene of freedom from the social constraints and banality of normal existence manifesting in non-stop, Ziggy Stardust themed hedonism. It was at this point which I cursed my own banal existence and considered breaking into the Big Brother house. Thankfully these thoughts were short lived. Of course the party cannot last forever. The inhabitants, some who already had fragile mental states were subjected to intensive psychological interrogations (in a room next to the gun range which was also installed for the occupants pleasure!) in order to heighten the intensification of the experience. A few days before the police stopped the show and removed the inhabitants people were beginning to turn. A combination of the free (gratis) and the consistent lack of privacy seemed to turn people, as described by one occupant, into beasts.
Although these were artificial circumstances Harris did succeed in showing the extremes that people are willing to go to in order for connection and recognition. It does not take a genius to overlay this art project with the tendencies and habits of online existence today. The intoxicating sense of exposure is now an almost ritualistic part of our existence and is a macrocosm of the early hedonistic stages of the Quiet: We Live in Public art project. Without the psychological interrogation, gun ranges and free alcohol/drugs it is hard to predict how the consistent lack of privacy will affect (or has already affected us) in the long run. Can’t wait to see.
Tagged: documentary, dot.com, Film, internet, sundance