Films We Love :: We Live in Public – The Rise, Fall + Mental Collapse of Josh Harris (pseudo.com)

Over the weekend I came across a very intriguing documentary about the rise, fall and mental collapse of one of the internet’s first true visionaries and pioneers, Josh Harris.  Harris, was the mind behind Pseudo.com, a mid-90′s online TV channel, which in many ways broke ground into what the future of online media had in store. At Pseudo during the mid-90′s, I got the opportunity to shoot some of my first video gigs at the legendary loft which used to reside right behind the old DKNY ad on the corner of Houston + Broadway.

Objectively, Pseudo was a company being run as if the kids stole the keys to the candy store and we’re now running the entire operation. But behind all the madness was Josh Harris, carefully plotting his next move. One of which was a bizarre reality show called “Quiet” – Where over 100 people lived together on camera for 30 days at the turn of the millennium in an underground bunker in NYC. The other was also a reality show called “We Live Public” which Harris and his girlfriend lived under 24-hour electronic surveillance, on view to the world wide web, which ultimately led to his mental collapse. All of Harris’s “experiments” seem to have demonstrated in one form or another the price we pay for living in public.

About The Film:
Ten years in the making and culled from 5000 hours of footage, WE LIVE IN PUBLIC reveals the effect the web is having on our society, as seen through the eyes of “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of”, artist, futurist and visionary Josh Harris. Award-winning director Ondi Timoner (DIG! — which also won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 2004 — making Timoner the only director to win that prestigious award twice) documented his tumultuous life for more than a decade to create a riveting, cautionary tale of what to expect as the virtual world inevitably takes control of our lives.

Harris, often called the “Warhol of the Web”, founded Pseudo.com, the first Internet television network during the infamous dot-com boom of the 1990s. He also curated and funded the ground breaking project “Quiet” in an underground bunker in NYC where over 100 people lived together on camera for 30 days at the turn of the millennium. With Quiet, Harris proved how we willingly trade our privacy for the connection and recognition we all deeply desire, but with every technological advancement such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, becomes more elusive. Through his experiments, including a six-month stint living with his girlfriend under 24-hour electronic surveillance which led to his mental collapse, Harris demonstrated the price we pay for living in public.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 11:17 AM and is filed under FWL BLOG and tagged with com, documentary, dot.com, film, Films We Love, friends we love, josh harris, mental collapse, NYC, Ondi Timoner, pseudo, pseudo.com, quiet, sundance, we live in public. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.