Artist We Live In Public

Documentarian Ondi Timoner makes some bold claims in We Live In Public, beginning with the statement that her subject, Josh Harris, is “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of.” As one of the first people to realize the potential of the Internet, Harris made millions in the ’90s. Then he squandered it all on two large-scale art projects. In one, “We Live In Public,” Harris and his girlfriend planted cameras and microphones around their apartment and streamed the real-time footage online. We Live In Public doesn’t show that Harris was a genius so much as that he was a mentally and emotionally unstable egotist, trying to force a revolution in self-broadcasting and connectivity that later happened more naturally. He lost a lot of people a lot of money in the process. Some pioneer.

Updated 02/02/2010