The Divide between Public and Private.

I have come up with some more ideas on an area or theme if you like that I want to touch on with this project. The area being the private and public divide and how computer interfaces, TV and media in general close this gap.

In this regard the film I have just watched We Live in Public encapsulates many of these ideas. The film content primarily deals with Josh Harris, one of the .com generation and how he pre-empted and predicted shows like Big Brother and social networks through his own social experiments Citizen of the Quiet and We Live in Public.

Citizen of the Quiet had a group of people living in a underground 'bunker', provided with food, entertainment, and pod-like beds being filmed 24/7. Through this he explored what Surveillance can do to the human condition, and how contestants increasingly felt the need to be seen, and this in turn affected their own personal identity of who they thought they were, but also by being filmed 24/7 how they would like to be perceived.  This arguabaly is as one of the interviewees says a 'physical embodiment of myspace'. There is a need to be seen, to be watched, enjoyment and satisfaction is generated through people liking your photos or statuses. You are screaming out look at me, know who I am, this very medium conditions how you perceive yourself and others. You in a sense invite the public into the private, it breaks this boundary.

His other project, the name of the film, We Live in Public takes this concept even further, he set up surveillance equipment all around his home, and through these web-cams broadcast his entire life onto the internet. Users were able to chat simultaneously while watching the 'show'. More increasingly the users would put both Josh and Tanya up to something, for example making Josh sleep on the bed. After having an argument once, they both went to check how that argues unfolded, and to get the users in-put about who was in the right, and in the wrong. Again, there is this desire to be seen, but also to know how you are perceived, and how your own personal identity is constructed is apparent. The users could in a sense control their actions by being allowed into the private sphere of the home.

As Josh remarks ' Big Brother isn't a person, it is a collective conciousness that watches over you...'