Long before anyone contemplated reality shows on network television, Josh Harris turned the ever-present, 24/7 camera into a social experiment which began a new era of interactive art. He designed the "Quiet: We Live in Public" experience at a time when online video was new, high speed internet was a luxury only the rich and businesses could afford, and the concept of observing the mundane around the clock was the purview of law enforcement. The experiment was an expression of his belief that eventually, we will all become part of one digital consciousness, with no sense of our own individual being.
The 1999 project began in a New York basement, transformed into a bunker with 100 pods stacked like a dog kennel. Each pod contained a sleeping space, a camera, and a video monitor. The rest of the bunker consisted of communal areas for eating and bathing, a shooting range, and private observation and control rooms where Harris and his team could observe and police the experiment. 100 artists volunteered to live in the bunker behind locked doors, with no outside contact. The monitors in each person's pod allowed them to watch what was shown on any camera in the bunker at any time. The actions of two people in one pod were the entertainment of others in a second pod. The reactions of the people in the second pod to what they were viewing were the entertainment of still others in their own pods. This contained feedback loop constantly changed the actions and attitudes of all participants, as they became both the subject and the audience of a free-form, month long film project.
Quiet was shut down early by police, and Harris went on to begin a new interactive experience in 2000. He wired his home with cameras in every room, and broadcast his life, live via internet. The site included a chat room, and viewers spoke to him and his live-in girlfriend in real time and by message, commenting on every aspect of their life from what was in the refrigerator to how they had sex. Within six months, his relationship ended and he experienced a mental break from the stress of the constant interaction.
We think of interaction in small scale, a single exhibit where a willing audience tentatively manipulates the work before them, or passively views the interaction between artists and machines. What Harris created was macro-interaction, pushing the art experience from a single shared moment to a network of shared experiences, influenced over long periods of time by multiple actors, each participating with as much or as little commitment as they desired.
The experiments of Josh Harris were featured in the documentary We Live In Public in 2009, which captures some of the many moments of both video experiences.
Sources:
We Live In Public, Ondi Timoner, 2009
ReThink Interview: Josh Harris - Nostradamus of the Net Tells Your Online Future
While I watched We Live In Public one thing that caught my eye from Harris's work was the part with people on their laptops and in squares. It reminded me when people are on computers there in their own little cubical. Concentrating on what their looking at for example, there in their own little box.
ReplyDelete"The experiment was an expression of his belief that eventually, we will all become part of one digital consciousness, with no sense of our own individual being."
ReplyDeleteThe above quote is one of those concepts that sounds almost logical and reasonable, but only on a conceptual level, i.e. if human beings manage to find a way to digitize the entirety of their brains, they can (in theory) enter into non-corporeal existence, so eventually (in theory) all of the human race would do so, and these virtual existence would mix and blend until a singular entity is created.
Unplug the computer for five minutes, however, and it seems ludicrous. We can barely manage cross-cultural understandings. A grand communion of all humanity upon a virtual plane--without any living examples of Homo sapiens remaining--would require more luck (or ill luck, depending on your viewpoint) than I can fathom.
However, the concept of "individuality" over "community" is worth further contemplation...
"The above quote is one of those concepts that sounds almost logical and reasonable, but only on a conceptual level, i.e. if human beings manage to find a way to digitize the entirety of their brains, they can (in theory) enter into non-corporeal existence, so eventually (in theory) all of the human race would do so, and these virtual existence would mix and blend until a singular entity is created."
ReplyDeleteWhat I love about this is that it's something I debate regularly with my geekier friends. We are a disparate group with views on things like politics and child-rearing that are so diametrically opposed we should hate each other. And yet, we have all found common ground via the internet. We met through Beta testing Star Wars Galaxies nearly 9 years ago, though only one or two of us out of nearly 40 still play it (and the game shut down completely this year).
We don't bond over the game, and haven't in many years. We instead bond over our day to day lives, which we've slowly shared with each other to the point that we've even exchanged gifts in some Decembers.
I see the in-roads, the possibility that some day, this actually could happen, whether by complacency or mutual understanding. And while I would hope for the latter, the pessimist in me sees the former as more likely.