Co-Opting Camera Culture for the Purpose of Praxis by Sam Archer
July 21st, 2011 5:38 PMI always feel sort of nervous about starting conversations with strangers, especially when it's to ask them for something, so this task was really awkward for me at first. A full day of asking people to take my picture helped me get over that.
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I'm not sure how I feel about it either. Doesn't seem like this one should have been a level 4.
Here's what happened: I read this task to mean:
Surveillance cameras are everywhere, and everyone's constantly taking photos of themselves, each other, the street, etc. So it should be possible to complete a task somewhere in public without even bringing a camera. And really, without even talking to the documenting strangers — you'd just complete the task somewhere with security cameras you know are publicly accessible, or you'd pull a Frank Chu and place yourself in a highly-photographed space and then go collect pics from sharing services, or you'd do something crazy enough that you'll have a good chance of ending up on a local blog, etc.
So I assigned it a high level. But no one else read it that way, because there's nothing in this one-sentence task to suggest that asking a someone else to photograph something isn't the point. I forgot about how much it was worth, though, so this should probably be cut down a level or two. Also, the double-task confusion is why "meta tasks" ("do five tasks at once!", "do a task with your mom!", etc) usually don't get approved unless they're really special.
Please to be reposting the version of this task that you had in mind. That sounds awesome.
But the nature of Co-Opting Camera Culture demands that you do a double task. It's impossible to complete without doing another. I do agree that it does feel a bit strange, but pairing these two makes perfect sense. After all, what do tourists do but ask other people to take pictures of them not looking at whatever sight is behind them (and waste my time on the bus)? Thank you for coming up with a brilliant match. The photos are all very properly touristy and really suit Tourist Infiltration.
Although really, you haven't been a tourist in SF until you've gotten on the 28 with me in the Marina district, chatted my ear off when all I want to do is read my book, and then asked, as we pull out of the Taraval stop 40 minutes later, where to get off for the Golden Gate Bridge, then watched my facial expressions change as I try to stop myself from banging your head into a pole. Now that's a show! And it's free if you don't include the price of my sanity!
I think the way to do this without making anybody uncomfortable is to submit this task in place of the other one. Meaning, instead of getting credit for two tasks when you only did one, you get credit for one task, when you actually did two. Here is an example of that being done.
That approach removes a lot of potential awesomeness in having proofs build on each other, though. For example, this task is a logical subset of this task, but they're clearly meant to be completed and recorded independently so that one leads into the next. In your example, I think it'd have been pretty cool to see each smaller praxis documented on its own, and then link them all together to make an overarching epic narrative that jumps from proof to proof.
Not sure how I feel about a double task like this.