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(unedited notes on class session 29 Oct 2014)
''Notes on class session & screening of We Live in Public, a documentary by Ondi Timoner, 2009''


== rebecca baron - how little we know of our neighbours ==
==We live in Public==


-images of survaillance.
The story of dot-com entrepreneur Josh Harris.
camera movements panning and zooming (survaillance) and gish eye distortion.
"The greatest internet pioneer you've never heard of."{{citation needed}}
images of passers-by in the city.
srteets


switch to other forms of filming: low-fi digital devices
Josh Harris founded Jupiter Communications, a firm which sold data and analysis on internet traffic.
shots of peaople with cameras in museums.
making photos to artworkd (and themselves, etc)


Start-up in the 1991 in advance of the  dot com boom.


photo of a woman on a bed, black and white: Francis asleep in her bed.
In 1984 Josh Harris arrives in New York.
Voice over:
rise early, creep u to her room and photograph her, during a few months.


---theme: unaware --- being caputerd by the camera unaware ----
-Brian Holmes: Future Maps


camera: btw the seer and the seen
The narrative of Josh's early career: follow the myth of the American dream
-gives no sacred aura to personal things
-depersonalizes
stops half way. Gives new value
captures a deeper truth than what we see???
"it snatches the event in time"


Vintage 1977?
Arrive in New York with $900, to end up as a tycoon in the 1990s.


vintage footage 70s Britain.
-Pseudo: a mix of video and chat: the future according to Josh.


An antropology of ourselves: "The Mass Ovseration movement"
*The MTV of the Internet
Earsdropping and making notes of wat ppl are ssaying.
Info on ppl behaviour
-record the everyday life in the streets.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL DISTANCE ---- <<<
----->>>  Plan of Campaign
humprehy Gennings
John Marrison
Filmmakers and anthropologists:
ggroup: the ovservers.


Send a
*It would represent the whole of the Internet.
official ovbersvers under direction of tom harrison.
detailed examination of life in bolton.
Observation OF the public, rather than By the public.
photo journalism.
Instruction (by Harrison): hey lets go posh for today, find a posh restaurant and photograph hats, how many lumps of suger they put on hte ir tea, etc.
etc.
etc.
Observers: counting reactions of the public rather than the quantities of what they consime:


----->>>> Michel de Certau: the practice of everyday life  <<<<----


Idealistic persuit of knowledge for its own sake.
Belief that thigns wuld become pure.
Methodology?? influence of surrealism??
"Mass observation" uncovers the innerstates of daily life, by using images/signposts/etc/and so on.
Belief tat the recording of facts can change things. a progressive belief.
H(ats)
Camera: manifest the traces of the collective unconscious not visible to the human eye.


Not want ppl to know that they are being photgraphed. Recall Vertov annotance at filming crowds in Moscow.
He poses as the Warhol of Internet TV.


Importance of concealing hte camera.Technology was difficult and slow, compared to today.
-Creat a Patform / environment for artists, etc.


(relate to today's daily life where cameras are ubiquituous)(
"We are in the business of programming people's lives."


contemporary shots: images of ppl in the side walk. A man reading a book on a public bench. More ppl on benches.
The film shows a narrative of Josh personal life: he's portrayed as goofy, nerdy, an alienated kid, who loved his mother virtually rather than physically.


Colin Harding: museum of film and tv
Economics of the internet: The Ad, the click, the transaction
looking at kodak cmeras 888 first kodak camera.


The change tha hand-held cameras introduce: to the audience (the slooked at subject).
Total freedom and total control.
1903: photographs of school girls.
Assign them pet names, field notes on each morning.
"Creatures of nature" "Zoological studies"
photos of animals srinkled among photos of gilrs.
hand cemras: termed "detective cameras" waiting to photograph ppl unawares.
cameras become
Waistcoat cameras.


A new style, ofr a new aesthetic photography. Candide photography.  
Luvvy: the name of a creepy face-painted clown persona Josh adopted. What Josh wanted to be. Luvvy as his mom.


It shows someone who really wants to reach out and connect.


contemporary images of school girls. Filmed unuwares?
connect with people mediated by TV


He leaves Pseudo.


Issue of the gaze. how does one react to the gaze of the cqmera.
(The importance of Gillian's Island in Josh's life narrative)
internalize the gaze of the other.


yet with mass obseervation, we dont know whether there is a busjective other in the other side of the camera gaze.
Group: our identity is not represented but performed, constantly.
The camera other.


Not about representtion but about the performace of a particular discourse.
==Quiet==


(Discourse for Foucault: a whole apparatus, a material pracrice, a collection of utterances, and material practices, etc... and so on)
Upon leaving Pseudo he embarks on a new project:


---------------------------->>> Foucault  <<<<<<<<<<----------------
"Quiet: We Live in Public"


Keywrods: the contruction of the individual.
An undergroup society, hotel-like: a party-social experiment: a precursor of Big Brother-style TV shows.
-surveillance
Jeremy Bentham: utilitarian, enlightment, invented the notion of the panocticon.
The subject internalizes the fact of being observed. We acts as if we are being observer constantly, whether we really are or not.
-Instead of violent control: disciplinary control.
Discipline works by internalizing the discourse.
-to reform -the discipline the body.
Panopticon: paradigm for power and disciplined behaviour.


-We regulate our behaviour when we think we are being watched.
Everybody may feel like celebrities, just by being on televized.
Bentham: social psychology. A discorse of Reforming: to get them to want to be what you ant them to be.


--------------->>>>>>>>>>>
- There's a fascist overtoned to the whole thing.


-17th to 18th c: the body is a subject of power thorugh punishment
Similar attemps as hippie communities, self-sufficient, etc.
modern age: body is trained, transformed and improved in particular spcaes:
prison, school, factory, barracks, supermarkets, etc.


The aim is efficiency. And the more compliant the body (docile) the more efficient that body will be.
-"Everything is free except the video that we get from you."
Technology of self: procedures by which we become subjects to ourselves.
gives rise to INDIVIDUALITY, this modern concept now rampaged by consumer discourse and capitalist strategies.
-now the body becomes part of utility. A body can be useful: economically, etc. EFFICIENCY becomes important through the codifiction of spce and time.
-time code gives individual a ranking.
-space code gives individual a space.


Constant survellaice, where everywhere and everyone is televized.


--------------->>>>>>continue with film notes <<<<<<<-----------
A prototype community.


jwnings : montage of impressions subjected tonthe surreality of the everyday.
An analogy of what the internet would be.


Tom was in search of intensive information.
Someone says: it's more fascinating to watch your friends than to watch normal TV.
Map and collect information on the manner an institution works.
The manner a discourse works.
Repeating the practices of proffesional anthropoly, or classical anthropology toward primitive ppls, as an ouside observer.
Photography as a tool for anthropology.
Taxonomy of human species: common features to persis. Create categories, on rce, behaviour, etc.
Photography power of authenticication.
the mute tetimony of the picture.
The quantity of data overwhelms their usefulness.
Crimial identification on a topography of phyisical characteristics. Anthropometry.
Antropometrc system to police department. The frontal and profile mug shots.
Until 1960 camera now provices a survaillance sysytem, rather than post-event record.
Mass observation team in Blackpool to investigate sex and behaviour. How they look when they are suppossed to be enjoying themselves.
LEISURE
Leisure under capitalism spectacle society.
Acussatoin of being eavesdropper. Acussation by the goverment!!
The goverment may have priviledged power for survaillance, and not hte civilians. (when a civilian group surveillance civilians....)etc
2nd war world:
Investigation focuses on the pubic reactoin to the war events, propaganda, etc.
Humprey Jennings creates propaganda for the war effort.


Harrison made a deal with the ministry of information intelligence body.
There is an initial sense of freedom while being watched. Having our lives exposed.
Observer where civilians acting in proxy for the goverment.
Think of the roles of google in contemporary politics, acting as proxy intellicece for the US foreign department.
Mass ovservation limited: market research fund.The practice of marketing collection data: mapping the activities of "consumers"
Civilians and everyday life are now looked as "consumers.'
The roloes of classic antropologist and (primitive) subject are now btw marketing researchers and consumers.


photos of contemporary surveillance cameras.
People want to have fame everyday (not just 15).
What happens when they are taken out of their closed circuit and say "broadcast"
(published)
To publish: to make public. to make a public.


research on participatory response and diaries.
- Though it seems to me that there is a very easy equation here that actually does hold: that being on TV makes you famous, or gives you the illusion of fame. That may
have been the case when TV was the main media outlet in the early 1990s, and to be televised meant to become famous, to be present for an audience out there, to be
broadcast.


------------>>>>>>>>> on foucault  <<<<<<<<-----------------
Yet when everyone is televised, when everyone is "famous", when everyone can be broadcasted (as is the case in Josh experiment, and is the case in today's web 2.0), this
normalizing
doesn't mean anyone is watching, or that you are famous at all. Just means your live is out there, not public, yet it have not much to do with fame at all anymore, but
Technology of the self: 3 weeks to change their lifestyle
with personal freedom and survaillance.
predict accurately what their future would be like: examination.


To Live in Public: everything is exposed, so how do you get to know people?


timecode, normalizing judgements. get ppl into self-improvement.
some don't notice the lack of privacy.
do yo
discourse: do you feel responsible??
the photograph becomes something objective: it tells the predicted test results.
"Performing evidence"
Issues of welfare become part of the media.


Jason Mittell from the University of Wisconsin- Madison wrote to me and suggested this:"Technologies of the self are the specific practices by which subjects constitute themselves within and through systems of power, and which often seem to be either 'natural' or imposed from above".
* Not just to film, but to collect information.
And Jennifer Webb of Queensland Art Gallery sent me this: "Technologies of the self are a series of techniques that allow individuals to work on themselves by regulating their bodies, their thoughts and their conduct".


--------------->>>>>>>> notes on a text by Steve Rushton <<<<<<<<<<---------
At one point we see kids using guns indide the closed up community. Problems with the police start.
Shift from representation to performance.
Extension from using closure that chracterize disciplinary societies.


Society of control: about modulation, not about containment.
Josh introduces a weird concept within his community: interrogation.


Lotikan: superstructure, reality tv sho: one phase of the neo-lberal performance subjects.
This is abusive, degrading, and the participant seem to have no option but let themselves into it.
Everybody who generates information and generates connectivity.
The base is represented by our day to day, abiut being visible.


Performance of the economy and the performance of being (presented) in the economy.
The authority of the camera is relevant here.
Perform oneself as a unique commodity person.
In a specctacular culture, everybody is a performer, constantly.


Mark PPoster: from panopticon to super-panopticon.
Psychological damage is evident.
A system of survaillance that operates from the codes embeded in non-scoping survaillance devices: bank card, library card, etc, etc...
Informational intersections, in order to get what i need.
Non-scoping forms of surveillance are attendant to scoping forms of survaillance.
In a control society i can move, yet there is a limit, which is encoded in the system, of how far i my mobility is allowed.


*** Consumers become participants in the creation and mantainance of a super-panopticon and control society.
Millenium: man against hte machine: leave something to future generations.


The discourse of the database: not an industrial discourse but based on informational data, and its control.
"It's a hard envirenment to be sober in." says one participant.


Digital encoding imposes a binary structure, a grid and straited space.
Suicidal thoughts anbd psychological instability among them also became evident.
the way the database is contructed: digitally, grid-like, stratied, organized, etc - is relevant in the manner individual are constructed. (through interfaces and underlying codes...)


Deleuze: in control society: we are controled by codes.
Freedom turns people into beasts.
DS: presets, rules and formulae that guide the action.
CS codes: the code is allowing to move. the place is deterritorialized, but the code is in place.
Command
Control
Centre


Now there is no centre to the panopticon, but a network of nodes wher.
Josh is portraed as a puppet master, letting everybody go fucked up, but not doing anything to better their conditions.


In SC the I is desituated -
With the mantra "Yea, that's the future", Josh seems to waive all problems.
Cliche: information wants to be free" neo-liberal capitalis: things have to flow, capital has to flow, etc, etc. Labour is liquid, money is liquid.


Modulation.
The community is seen by outsiders as some kind of a Millenium cult.
The body is deterritorialized in a line of informational nodes.
 
The subjects in Josh's experiment had become human parasites.
 
-At the end everyone had a different idea of what it was that they experienced, of what the whole experiment was.
 
To go from love to hate, from creativity to destruction.
 
The police interrupt in the ealy hours of New Yeas day 2000, and closes the premises: the show is over.
 
Josh leaves on a trip boat.
 
 
 
==We Live in Public==
 
Next project:
 
To experiment with himself.
 
"We Live in Public"
 
Josh and girlfriend Tanya Corrin set up to live together and broadcast constantly their lives on the internet. There's also a chat platform in their site, so that the
audience can interact with them. This means at the same time that they can know what their audience thinks of them in real time.
 
This allows a lavel of interactivity and communication between them and the audience, which goes beyond normal platforms of broadcasting, even of other internet
broadcasting.
 
They are giddy the first month.
 
Back to Josh's personal narrative: the relationship with his mom.
 
He fantazises that people would be able to purchase tapes of him and his daily life: the logic here is that this is implied by being a celebrity (which he is, according
to him)
 
For him, getting in TV was a way to validate yourself.
 
Slowly there's distance within the relationship.
 
Creating an alientation between them: to be in public yet have no connection.
 
-To be stuck.
 
When arguing in public its all about the egos: performing for an external other.
 
They are always eager to see what the audience's response was.
 
Harris had no control.
 
The audience is on control.
 
Dom com bubble busts: on March and April 2000, more than 75,000 people lost their jobs. Pseudo was sold, whole, and it went under in October.
 
Josh is waiting for Tanya to leave, yo get out.
 
He is a celebrity, yet people stop watching.
 
His personal worth depended on other's opinions.
 
The audience's response was a constant reminder: we watch.
 
Big Brother is not a person, but the collective consciousness.
 
The collective eyes of a society that survellance itself, without the need of a Big Brother entity.
 
"I'm mentally sick." He finally admits.
 
== and then ==
 
2001:
 
The film slightly touches on the gentrification of New York.
 
Harris: a spirit and a vision.
 
The film holds him as unique.
 
He "retires" to an apple farm in upstate New York.
 
He presents the trees: "they are my friends". He shows his impulse to control, by believing that the trees are somehow influenced by is mere physical precesence.
 
Tanya Corrin is portrayed as a "virtual girlfriend", cast for the specific project "We Live in Public". Josh tries to present the whole project as a pseudo relationship
with a pseudo girlfriend, in order to protect his image.
 
Relatyionship with mother again. She wasn't there for him, he wasn't there for her.
 
Back to the start of the film, when Josh is recording a godbye message on a video tape for his mother, who is in her death bed.
 
"I'm an artist." He insists that his work be read as an artist's.
 
Breaks all contact with his family
 
To rewrite his own history: Pseudo as an art project. Tanya as a fake girlfriend, etc.
 
2005
 
Web 2.0
 
Josh leaves attempts a comeback to the internet business by introducing "Operator 11: Run your own show."
 
Harris prediction slowly become apparent: Google, Facebook, bring the cameras to themselves.
 
We create value by feeding content.
 
We share, enjoy the attention, etc.
 
We live in public: Looking back Josh's ideas seem like predictions.
 
The "Quiet" community project as a physical prediction of the contemporary online networked survellance society.
 
Next we find him in Ethiopia. "No media."
 
"Pure humanity."
 
Real
 
Did he find his island?

Latest revision as of 21:29, 11 November 2014

Notes on class session & screening of We Live in Public, a documentary by Ondi Timoner, 2009

We live in Public

The story of dot-com entrepreneur Josh Harris. "The greatest internet pioneer you've never heard of." [citation needed]

Josh Harris founded Jupiter Communications, a firm which sold data and analysis on internet traffic.

Start-up in the 1991 in advance of the dot com boom.

In 1984 Josh Harris arrives in New York.

-Brian Holmes: Future Maps

The narrative of Josh's early career: follow the myth of the American dream

Arrive in New York with $900, to end up as a tycoon in the 1990s.

-Pseudo: a mix of video and chat: the future according to Josh.

  • The MTV of the Internet
  • It would represent the whole of the Internet.


He poses as the Warhol of Internet TV.

-Creat a Patform / environment for artists, etc.

"We are in the business of programming people's lives."

The film shows a narrative of Josh personal life: he's portrayed as goofy, nerdy, an alienated kid, who loved his mother virtually rather than physically.

Economics of the internet: The Ad, the click, the transaction

Total freedom and total control.

Luvvy: the name of a creepy face-painted clown persona Josh adopted. What Josh wanted to be. Luvvy as his mom.

It shows someone who really wants to reach out and connect.

connect with people mediated by TV

He leaves Pseudo.

(The importance of Gillian's Island in Josh's life narrative)

Group: our identity is not represented but performed, constantly.

Quiet

Upon leaving Pseudo he embarks on a new project:

"Quiet: We Live in Public"

An undergroup society, hotel-like: a party-social experiment: a precursor of Big Brother-style TV shows.

Everybody may feel like celebrities, just by being on televized.

- There's a fascist overtoned to the whole thing.

Similar attemps as hippie communities, self-sufficient, etc.

-"Everything is free except the video that we get from you."

Constant survellaice, where everywhere and everyone is televized.

A prototype community.

An analogy of what the internet would be.

Someone says: it's more fascinating to watch your friends than to watch normal TV.

There is an initial sense of freedom while being watched. Having our lives exposed.

People want to have fame everyday (not just 15).

- Though it seems to me that there is a very easy equation here that actually does hold: that being on TV makes you famous, or gives you the illusion of fame. That may have been the case when TV was the main media outlet in the early 1990s, and to be televised meant to become famous, to be present for an audience out there, to be broadcast.

Yet when everyone is televised, when everyone is "famous", when everyone can be broadcasted (as is the case in Josh experiment, and is the case in today's web 2.0), this doesn't mean anyone is watching, or that you are famous at all. Just means your live is out there, not public, yet it have not much to do with fame at all anymore, but with personal freedom and survaillance.

To Live in Public: everything is exposed, so how do you get to know people?

some don't notice the lack of privacy.

  • Not just to film, but to collect information.

At one point we see kids using guns indide the closed up community. Problems with the police start.

Josh introduces a weird concept within his community: interrogation.

This is abusive, degrading, and the participant seem to have no option but let themselves into it.

The authority of the camera is relevant here.

Psychological damage is evident.

Millenium: man against hte machine: leave something to future generations.

"It's a hard envirenment to be sober in." says one participant.

Suicidal thoughts anbd psychological instability among them also became evident.

Freedom turns people into beasts.

Josh is portraed as a puppet master, letting everybody go fucked up, but not doing anything to better their conditions.

With the mantra "Yea, that's the future", Josh seems to waive all problems.

The community is seen by outsiders as some kind of a Millenium cult.

The subjects in Josh's experiment had become human parasites.

-At the end everyone had a different idea of what it was that they experienced, of what the whole experiment was.

To go from love to hate, from creativity to destruction.

The police interrupt in the ealy hours of New Yeas day 2000, and closes the premises: the show is over.

Josh leaves on a trip boat.


We Live in Public

Next project:

To experiment with himself.

"We Live in Public"

Josh and girlfriend Tanya Corrin set up to live together and broadcast constantly their lives on the internet. There's also a chat platform in their site, so that the audience can interact with them. This means at the same time that they can know what their audience thinks of them in real time.

This allows a lavel of interactivity and communication between them and the audience, which goes beyond normal platforms of broadcasting, even of other internet broadcasting.

They are giddy the first month.

Back to Josh's personal narrative: the relationship with his mom.

He fantazises that people would be able to purchase tapes of him and his daily life: the logic here is that this is implied by being a celebrity (which he is, according to him)

For him, getting in TV was a way to validate yourself.

Slowly there's distance within the relationship.

Creating an alientation between them: to be in public yet have no connection.

-To be stuck.

When arguing in public its all about the egos: performing for an external other.

They are always eager to see what the audience's response was.

Harris had no control.

The audience is on control.

Dom com bubble busts: on March and April 2000, more than 75,000 people lost their jobs. Pseudo was sold, whole, and it went under in October.

Josh is waiting for Tanya to leave, yo get out.

He is a celebrity, yet people stop watching.

His personal worth depended on other's opinions.

The audience's response was a constant reminder: we watch.

Big Brother is not a person, but the collective consciousness.

The collective eyes of a society that survellance itself, without the need of a Big Brother entity.

"I'm mentally sick." He finally admits.

and then

2001:

The film slightly touches on the gentrification of New York.

Harris: a spirit and a vision.

The film holds him as unique.

He "retires" to an apple farm in upstate New York.

He presents the trees: "they are my friends". He shows his impulse to control, by believing that the trees are somehow influenced by is mere physical precesence.

Tanya Corrin is portrayed as a "virtual girlfriend", cast for the specific project "We Live in Public". Josh tries to present the whole project as a pseudo relationship with a pseudo girlfriend, in order to protect his image.

Relatyionship with mother again. She wasn't there for him, he wasn't there for her.

Back to the start of the film, when Josh is recording a godbye message on a video tape for his mother, who is in her death bed.

"I'm an artist." He insists that his work be read as an artist's.

Breaks all contact with his family

To rewrite his own history: Pseudo as an art project. Tanya as a fake girlfriend, etc.

2005

Web 2.0

Josh leaves attempts a comeback to the internet business by introducing "Operator 11: Run your own show."

Harris prediction slowly become apparent: Google, Facebook, bring the cameras to themselves.

We create value by feeding content.

We share, enjoy the attention, etc.

We live in public: Looking back Josh's ideas seem like predictions.

The "Quiet" community project as a physical prediction of the contemporary online networked survellance society.

Next we find him in Ethiopia. "No media."

"Pure humanity."

Real

Did he find his island?

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