{"id":39209,"date":"2019-02-12T18:33:54","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T23:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/?p=39209"},"modified":"2019-02-12T19:53:21","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T00:53:21","slug":"we-live-in-public-roger-ebert-review-from-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/the-bomb\/2019\/02\/12\/we-live-in-public-roger-ebert-review-from-2009\/","title":{"rendered":"‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ \/ ROGER EBERT review from 2009 (!!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

when a little slice of the hard-core downtown art scene – was WIRED !!!!<\/p>\n

and I mean . . w-i-r-e-d in every great way & sense of the word \/ you can imagine.
\nfrom 24\/7 surveillance, (wired) to public real-time monitors (wired) . . to outrageous art & thought, beyond the beyond !!
\nwired . .
\nbeyond your wildest dreams.
\ntalk about . . spinning out.
\nguns, quilts, & orgies to . . light shows, politicians, extreme video games, and goths.
\nsurvival, comfort, Americana – before it hit \/ Calvin Klein & RAF SIMMONS 2018 . . big.
\n‘bio’ drives, zen gardens, & interrogation rooms,
\nand always, lots & lots of that green stuff \/ as Cardi says: money money money !!!!
\nopen bars on every floor, and a 4 star chef in the kitchen.
\ntalk about . . wired !! this was so<\/strong> wired.<\/p>\n

and,
\nway, way before . . YOU<\/strong> were wired !!, on your cellphone, FB, SNAP & IG \/ believe it.<\/p>\n

while, catching up with ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’, this review by the renown movie critic ROGER EBERT, popped up.
\npublished back in OCT 14, 2009 – it makes some interesting insights.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nJOSH HARRIS . . in the MARIA ALEJANDRA GIUDICI \/ MARIANO AIRALDI transparent, communal shower at ‘Quiet’ – the millennial party \/ downtown art residency . . that kick-started ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’.<\/p>\n

it starts off:<\/p>\n

“I’d never heard of Josh Harris, who is billed in ‘We Live in public’, as “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of.’ I can be excused for thinking Harris was the fictional hero of a pseudo-documentary, until the film quickly<\/strong> and obviously became authentic<\/strong>. It’s not<\/strong> often you see a doc that’s been filmed over a period of 15 years.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Josh was involved in the early days of Prodigy, back in the CompuServe era, and in 1993 founded Pseudo.com which forecast<\/strong> audio and video Webcasting, YouTube, Hulu and countless other streamers. he was, to put it kindly, ahead of his time. In 1993, 300-baud modems were commonplace, and 1200 was fast.<\/p>\n

Harris was a myopic visionary, a man who<\/strong> saw the future more vividly than his own life. He was a prototype nerd, a lonely kid who raised himself while planted in front of an old black-and-white TV set, using ‘Gilligan’s Island’, as a vistual famly . . . <\/p>\n

In the 1990s, he became one of the early dot.com millionaires <\/strong>, a celebrity on New York, where he threw lavish parties intended not so much for the famous as to attract<\/strong> brilliant and artistic kids to work for him.”<\/p>\n

correction: <\/strong> Mr. Ebert gets his $$ facts a little confused here \/ although he does real<\/strong> good with the gist of it. It was Josh’s first<\/strong> company ‘JUPITER.COM’ . . the very<\/strong> first internet \/ trend tracking service . . which Josh started with $700, & went on to sell, shortly thereafter for $81 million dollars (!!) \/ then those mega $$$$ funds when into ‘Pseudo’ – which was to become the multi-channel incubator online streaming endeavor & which threw the real wild parties. <\/p>\n

this is true:<\/strong> “Pseudo.com is remembered from that time as Nerd Heaven, with good pay, perks, free creature comforts — demanding only your body and soul”, and this was esp true<\/strong> for the other side of the Pseudo game plan – the artists<\/strong> who put on the outrageous parties.<\/p>\n

this also true, when modified:<\/strong> He sold Jupiter, not Pseudo . . for something like $80 million dollars, and that was the end of his good timing.”<\/p>\n

well, financially.
\nhe did <\/strong>go on to become the star of a Sundance winning doc, & is still being hailed as the godfather of ‘social media’, for better, or for worse. and now his story is about to become a bonafide Hollywood feature directed by BEN STILLER, ‘Escape From Dannemora’ (!!), and the super bad \/ super hot . . JONAH HILL will<\/strong> play Josh . . !!
\nJosh always<\/strong> claimed his goal was to be known as an artist, so if it took losing it all – so be it.
\ndown with good timing, & up with the creative respect & social media ‘props’.<\/p>\n

ok – back to the review !!<\/p>\n

excerpt:<\/strong> “The filmmaker ONDI TIMONER had already started to document Harris’ life,”
\n(ps: Josh hired her after seeing ‘DIG! – nancy \/ for all<\/strong> you Brooklyn ‘DIG!’ fans ),
\n“and was on the scene when he began a notorious project named ‘Quiet’. Try to imagine this: About 100 of the best and brightest he could find agreed to live 24 hour a day in a cavernous space below street level. They would be under video surveillance every moment. Their lives would be streamed on the web.” (remember, this is 1999<\/strong> – dial-up internet !! – nancy)
\n“They shared dining and recreational (!!!) facilities <\/strong> and even a shooting range. They were given state-of-the art computers . They lived in cubicles with the square footage of perhaps six coffins.” (actually much less, maybe 2 coffins – nancy)
\n“These were stacked atop each other like sleeping pods in a Japanese airport.” <\/p>\n

“And this was to be the future, in which we would all live virtually on the Internet.”<\/p>\n

& my fave line of all:<\/strong>
\n“Remarkably, no murders<\/strong> claimed any of Quiet’s eager volunteers; whether any births resulted is not reported.”<\/p>\n

& one last correction: <\/strong>we were NOT volunteers – we were paid<\/strong>, and . . well !!!
\nno wonder the well, ran dry.
\nperformance artists ? I guess so, but certainly – not scripted !!!!!! <\/p>\n

damnit<\/strong>, I can’t<\/strong> do your homework, all the time.<\/p>\n

well, here’s the link:<\/strong> go read it for yourself !! – ROGER EBERT REVIEWS ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

when a little slice of the hard-core downtown art scene – was WIRED !!!! and I mean . . w-i-r-e-d in every great way & sense of the word \/ you can imagine. from 24\/7 surveillance, (wired) to public real-time monitors (wired) . . to outrageous art & thought, beyond the beyond !! wired . […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39209"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39214,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39209\/revisions\/39214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}