We LiveIn Public

Reading/Writing

Annotation

We Live In Public

(1995) Josh Harris and his relationship with his mother: attempts to communicate with her electronically after right before she died. Made a youtube video. Seemed cold

One day were going to wake up as servants

Harris moves to nyc to work in the tech industry in 1994 He was very taken by the internet, was working as a researcher Seemed to know more about it before anyone else

Jupiter communications: financial predictions with program. Sold data to companies Included a chat platform as well Sold it to prodigy

Jupiter went public, he made 80million

His career sky rocketed more quickly than would have been possible in the tech industry before the net

1991: web 1996: a million sites 97: beginning of the .com boom 99: 150 million users

Fundamental change in the human condition. The mode of representation has changed.

.com kids: rich, hip

Josh began throwing parties. Popular, new.

Creates Pseudo.com Josh invited film maker to join him at the company Pseudo: first internet tv network Chat rooms corresponding with live video Interactive television The streaming quality was too poor to really get into

Group of young and diverse people running their own internet tv programs Josh wanted his network to have various networks and programs " all program network"

Compared to andy warhols factory Created an environment for creativity No restrictions Hiring talented people- excellent casting, diverse. 300 people quickly.

Silicon alley

1999 Josh became incredibly famous Pseudo represented the whole .com world " in a race to take cnn out of business" " my tv is more efficient" internet business can attract and count its audience Web is the most powerful media on earth You can craft your audience Assume its going to work, assume its gonna happen and you'll be the first person to get there

"Im in the business of programming peoples lives"

Had a kinda difficult youth. 

Father was absent. Mom worked in a prison, drank, and was absent. Raised himself a lot "Loved my mother virtually, not physically" Best friend as a kid was tv. Didn't play with others. Physically neglected but could absorb the calories from tv programs

Gilligan affected society more than the death of jfk " Im more like gilligan than my parents "

"Launder my head" Art animation " come-form with me" Group generated consciousness

We all would have to perform

Josh allias: luvy. A clown.

He wanted to be a clown but people respected him too much as a tech master to look at him as a joke Josh wants so badly to connect w people, but is trying in all the wrong ways. it was sweet. But people really didnt like it. It made them think he was crazy. Unacceptable for ceo to dress up as clown.

He became less sharp, and involved. Left pseudo. He and they were happy to see him go:

Called pseudo an art project, and said he was happy to move onto something new

Next experiment: we live in public . QUIET

Hotel, people in pods.

Party, social experiment. Had food, shelter, power, weapons, technology, art

Funded it all 2 million spent

Theres a new boy in town, its called technology

Set up "capsules" had video, intercoms. Wired together through tv station

You could see everything everybody does. Mass surveillance

Maybe everybody will be celebs here Stazi type recording info Interrogate people

Fascist overtone but seemingly for art ir experimentation sajes

Modalities of the experiment: Disipiplined Filmed Eat when i say, eat where. Its all free, but we own the video of you "Everything is free, but the video we own" You had to take a 323 question test, give ss#, People wore uniforms "Ive joined the cult" "Pod-wellian" Josh was a "psuper permissive parents"

People wanted to know who was behind it. Had to be some secret puppet master. Analogy for the internet w this prototype community Everyone will have a channel "Were all vastly more interesting to watch than television" "Why are you tuning in on my channel?"

There was total freedom despite being watched

As time goes by were going to have our lives increasingly exposed and were going to want that to happen Warhol was wrong. Not 15 min of fame in a lifetime, but 15 minutes a day

Were all becoming less individuals and more one

Electronic human bee hive

It exploded. People wanted to be there. People wanted to meet others. Marking your bod, and now the pod race is on the way.

Surveillance police state You give up your identity to the hive

CIA psychiatrist Interrogation room: abusive. People were doing whatever they were told, dispite how degrading ut was

People were becoming brain washed They would do anything they were told

Rats in Josh's lab

"We are y2k" Josh acted like a priest

Things became aggressively weird Waiting for someone to flip out Josh was the puppet master and allowed the strings to get tangled

"Freedom is turning people into beasts" "Thats the future"

Shut down by cops as a doomsdate cult, jan 1 2000. The people had proved his theory Human parasites

Experiment in futuristic living

Josh was watching it like tv. He didn't know how to connect w people but this is how he can see them.

Radical humanism

See: The milgram Obedience experiment zimbardo prison experiment

After raid: took a few on fishing trip On boat: people were happy, and josh got intimate w tanya

Next project: w tanya

Saw what surveilance could do, so set cameras on himself. 72 microphones Sensors on cameras

First couple to live in public Weliveinpublic.com Chat was side of the live video

At first: like a toy

Always mailed his mom the press clippings People collecting moments of video from his life

Josh is driven by fame The camera validated you

Eventually ate away at the relationship It became alienating to be connecting to so many people, but had no real connection to a real person anymore

When you argue in public, its about the ego and about winning. They said things to hurt the other. They checked comments in the chat to see what they suggest. The audience sided with her.

In 2000, the $$$ was gone. The .com bubble burst

They hoped someone would buy pseduo. No one did.

Josh went through all this on tv Tanya left.

He was happy to have her off the island

How many people were watching measured his self worth

" in we live in public, i was the rat"

Big brother isnt a person, its the collective conscious that is watching

He became mentally sick from constant surveillance

Left nyc

Then 911 happened. Nyc became the gated island.

2003: josh called ps1 director. Bought apple farm

To cleanse from media/ tech, people retreat to nature Josh retreated to isolation. Calls himself a great artistic of 21 cent

Farmer josh was just another episode

2005: broadband internet

Josh: operator 11 Independant people producing video

Proposed a broadcast plan to social media , no one took.

As time goes by, his projects are going to become real.

Notice me!

Slaves to our digital boxes : his pods in quiet, w the. Camera

The internet world he helped create rejected his ideas

2008: josh moved to ethiopia

Annotation: HLWKON

Rebecca Warren: How little we know of the neighbors

Slow and distorted footage out of a window, panning along a park and along the road Zooms in and out showing the visitors to the park pans back, and shifts over to a highway but with no cuts shot in a a surveillance style sits with each person or persons for only a sort time, before zooming out and back to find a new subject ___ music stops, camera style changes opens with footage of people photographing on the sreet next we see a group of tourists in washinton photographing the monuments next, tourists in a museum we see people with tripods people of different ages and races

we never see what it is that they are photographing only that they are photographing

quote from harvard law review about photographs

we see a slideshow of bw photos of a maid, frances, asleep in her bed. narration begins, and we hear a story of a man photographing his sleeping nanny every morning (the woman in the photo)

next we see a far away shot of a man at a cafe table narration begins, descrying the cameras behavior 'it depersonalizes, it decategorizes' it gives due value to the objects and the subjects

next jan 1937, narration about Edward the 8th marrying wallace simpson ethnographic survey of britan: proposed to understand the current state of england. the mass observation movement: people sitting around and making notes on the every day people what, where, what they did, how they did it, what was done most often. all documented.

the group was fonduing by humpfry jennings, tom harrison, and so and so.

they answered questions, and sent them to the agency

photographers were invited to assist tom harrison in his observations of the people visited the every day, and visited posh restaurants and asked the photographer to photograph the style of the people in the posh places, how did they manner, what did they talk about

they were armed with stop watches timed laughter couted drinks consumed how long they were consumed

surrealist anthropology why was britan repressed trying to understand how the objects in peoples lives relate to this repression how are those objects used

camera documented the collective unconscious of the people, and of the society that which could not be seen with the human eye

used technical tricks to try and document and observe with out being seen as not to influence the observed

switch: goes to inventory of cameras and explains their function

back to photo of maid asleep

he (edward) would photograph the girls in kensington followed certain girls for years notes how the photographing went. successful or not. mounted the photos in a book called 'zoological studies' and included pics of zoo animals along with the girls

started using detective cameras to go unnoticed, but he failed and was asked to stop lurking around the school with his came

being to discuss the staging of photographs that are difficult to capture naturally ____ pause for notes

Annotation: Means of Correct Training

Why is Foucault important? key words: surveillance discipline training the construction of individuality

The "Pan-optic-um"

discipline societies penance: penitentiary

Panopticon: provides a paradigm for power and disciplined behavior based on Jeremny Benthams design for a penitentiary panopticon (1791) we regular our behavior when we think we are being watched

in the classical age, the body is a subject of power through punishment in the modern age, the body is trained, transformed, improved in particular spaces. prison, school, factory, barracks the aim is efficiency: and the more complaint the body (docile) the more efficient that body will be

technology of the self: transformation. training. individuality: the concept of the individual

Efficiency is gained through the codification of space and time

time code of the timetable and the space code of the architectural plan

time code gives each individual ranking the space code gives each individual a space

Foucault uses the term bio-power to describe the distribution of bodies in space and time the body is no longer subject to the will of a ruler but enters a disciplinary system where surveillance, discipline, ranking, and self regulation are key elements

Participatory surveillance

Bad side- 'we are cogs in a machine'

good side-the system of health care and education for instance are introduced in which increase our efficiency but also improve our well being

nevertheless: our individuality is constructed. the individuals is born into the disciplinary society and is defined by it

but its worth remembering that it was like before (in sovereign societies)

individuality: i become something because i am not you.

potentially were moving out of the disciplinary society, and into something else.

the means of correct training: the fuctio of the disciplinary society is to train

discipline can be understood as a tech of power and the individual as construction of power

3 subjects of the chapter:

Observation/Surveillance

Normalizing Judgement

the Examination-the gaze that makes it possible to classify

Observation/Surveillance: Example: Muybridge photography: system for people to be categorized, and examined photos are an agent of normalization

typology of criminals today, we see arab man as terrorists bc the perpetuation of these images of guys in turbans w beards

individuality is a work in progress

Humpery Jennings: documentary film movement surrealist movement

photography and anthropology

Henry fox talbot: testimony of a photo in criminal cases

quantity overwhelming their usefulness

during war time: mass observation now had more of a focus in terms of subject matter instead of just general observations observers: civilian spies for the us military some of the observers left as not to collaborate with the military and the government

Mass observation to Market research

TV: big brother general surveilance security cameras tagging

production of knowledge vs production of facts

the move from representation to performance

what do i represent, what do i present

___ examination to predict what the identity of someone would be based on certain attributes or interests, diet, etc

School Family

not at school, grown from the family then, work. or maybe the prison

Masters of reality: if we make an internet post, were doing it to perform our self. to make a connection. to be noticed. to extend into another. its about performance, its not about representation performance is needed for us to maintain visibility

today, were constantly in the mode of performance

The super Panoptican

Disciplinary societies: in a particular space people are de-territorialized

Controlled society: monitored and encoded but not limited to a specific location. much broader.