| WE LIVE IN PUBLIC | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Ondi Timoner |
| Produced by | Ondi Timoner Keirda Bahruth |
| Starring | Josh Harris |
| Edited by | Ondi Timoner Joshua Altman |
Release date |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $41,711 [1] |
We Live In Public is a 2009 documentary film by Ondi Timoner about Internet pioneer Josh Harris, indirectly highlighting the loss of privacy in the Internet age.
The film details the experiences of Josh Harris, a dot-com millionaire who founded Pseudo.com, and who became interested in human experiments testing the effects of media and technology on the development of personal identity. To that end, Harris created the art project "Quiet: We Live in Public", which placed more than one hundred artists in a human terrarium under New York City, with a myriad of webcams following and capturing their every move. [2] Each pod was outfitted by artist Jeff Gompertz [3] with cameras and screens to allow every occupant to monitor every other pod. [4] Following that project, Harris outfitted a loft with 30 surveillance cameras and 66 microphones, broadcasting online his own life with his new girlfriend for a planned 100 days, "becoming the rat in his own experiment". She left and the couple broke up after 81 days. [5]
The film includes commentary from Internet personalities Chris DeWolfe, Jason Calacanis, Douglas Rushkoff, and venture capitalist Fred Wilson, as well as artists and producers involved in the "Quiet: We Live in Public" event such as V. Owen Bush, Jeff Gompertz, Leo Fernekes, Feedbuck, Leo Koenig, Gabriella Latessa, Alex Arcadia, Zeroboy, and Alfredo Martinez. [6]
We Live in Public was screened six times at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival before being awarded the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. documentary category. [7] Timoner is the first director in the Sundance Film Festival's history to twice win the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, having won in 2004 with Dig!. [8] [9] We Live in Public was runner-up for Best Documentary at the 2009 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. [10]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 82% approval rating, based on 51 reviews. The critics consensus says, "This documentary about Josh Harris' surveillance-as-art project exposes the problems of privacy in the internet age and asks provocative questions about the power of ego in a place where everything is on display." [11] Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, his highest rating, and wrote, "This is a remarkable film about a strange and prophetic man." [12]
Ondi Doane Timoner is an American filmmaker and the founder and chief executive officer of Interloper Films, a production company located in Pasadena, California.
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Interloper Films is a production company based in Pasadena, California. Interloper was founded in 1994 by siblings Ondi Timoner and her brother David Timoner. Interloper produces documentaries, music videos, and short form media. Two Interloper documentaries, We Live in Public (2009) and DIG! (2004), have won Sundance grand jury awards. The latter film was co-released by Palm Pictures and was acquired into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It showed at Cannes and many other prestigious festivals. We Live in Public is currently touring the festival circuit and will be appearing at many conferences including SXSW, the Cannes Film Festival and will have a New York premiere at the New Directors/New Films Festival, sponsored by the Lincoln Center and MOMA.
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Josh Harris is an American Internet entrepreneur. He was the founder of JupiterResearch and Pseudo.com, a live audio and video webcasting website founded in 1993. In 2000, it would file for bankruptcy following the dot-com bubble. He "may have been the first internet millionaire in New York," where "he rode the web 1.0 dotcom boom to a fortune of $85 million," and then lost all his money.
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