“Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded” is an Endless Nightmare
There used to be a time when we could exist in the world without the feeling of constantly being surveilled. At the risk of sounding like George Orwell, someone is watching at all times. Perhaps that seems like the blown-out-of-proportion ramblings of a paranoid person, but the surveillance state has been rebranded as a Ring doorbell and sold to millions. Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded is a short film that plays on the state of the world we find ourselves in and asks the audience to grapple with the fact that, in this situation, they are the outsiders peering into someone else’s world.
Anna (Anna Maguire) is on a trip to Los Angeles. She’s staying in a rental home, chatting aimlessly on the phone to a friend. She strikes up a joint and goes for a walk around the neighborhood to get better service. It’s a situation, give or take some specifics, that many of us have found ourselves in. Alone in a new city with our guard down. Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded asks the audience to really think about how alone a person can actually be in our current world. Is there a place that exists outside of the watchful eye of technology?
Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded has played, and continues to play, at film festivals around the world, but attendance at one of these festivals is not the only way to see the film. In fact, the filmmakers’ preferred means of experiencing this work is on a website they set up exclusively for this film. The 7.5-minute short runs on a perpetual loop on the site, allowing the audience to experience Anna’s existence as it’s reduced to this trapped sensation. Her every move is visible to anyone who wants to tune in.
Courtesy of Stupid Co
We are living in a time when anonymity is harder and harder to preserve. If there’s a fight at the local supermarket, any passerby can whip out their HD phone and broadcast it to the world. On a positive note, the interconnected nature of technology allows us to create a community that can transcend miles in a millisecond. The negative side of things is evident every day someone logs onto a social media site and sees ordinary people going viral for ordinary actions. While Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded does not implicitly go into the repercussions of surveillance like this, it’s obvious that’s where the minds of the filmmakers are. As Anna wanders around the Los Angeles neighborhood she’s visiting, she’s being watched by doorbell, security, and plenty of other cameras. She’s not doing anything particularly noteworthy or troublesome, yet her every movement is tracked. Even when she finishes her walk and returns to the solitude of her rental home, there’s a hidden camera that studies her.
What have we lost if there’s no such thing as privacy anymore? There’s a relentless nature to the 24/7 stream of Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded on the website that, while extreme, resonates with the viewer. It’s nearly impossible to exist without being in the frame of someone’s camera at all times. Even as I write this, the dark lens of my laptop camera peers at me while the dual lenses on my cell phone observe from my desk. Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded is a fascinating social experiment, both in its subject matter and release format, that proves new technological horrors are always right around the corner.
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