Reflections: on methodology and media

I probably have no right to be publishing reflections on methodology and media yet, since I've only done one task in the hunt, but I worked out how to change the dates on posts and can always change it later and pretend I had these thoughts much further down the track.

My reflections are on recording the hunt tasks using:

• written blog entries


• photos


• video

If I went and found an object and interacted with someone and just wrote it down, there would be no problem whatsoever. "John, the employee at the magic shop, walked me down the aisle to show me where the magic wands are kept, shuffling a bit in his oversized camoflage trousers," and etc. I wouldn't have to get John's permission, the particular magic shop would never be identified, it wouldn't confront anyone.

Photos change the dynamic. For the macadamia post below, I was alone in a public place taking photos of ordinary things for no discernable reason. I felt like I had to be really furtive and watch out for spectators, and that very furtiveness probably made me look a million times more suspicious. To get the shot of the front of the store, I was sitting in the passenger seat of my own car, pointing a camera out the window across the parking lot. Why is that girl doing that? And inside, taking an already on camera out of my purse and pointing it to the madamia nut display - why on earth is that girl doing that? The fact that the photo was inside a privately owned store seemed to make it even more confrontational.

(A side-note about photos - I've started taking my camera with me everywhere and last night, the night of the summer solstice, as I was walking down a side-street toward College Avenue, I stopped to take a photo of the sun, to record how high it was in the sky at 6:40 at night, a height I still find completely freaky because I haven't lived at this latitude before. When I put the camera down, there was a feral sort of guy passing by on a bike - a guy who, come to think of it, looked like he might work in a magic store - and he said, "What are you taking a picture of?" "The sun!" I said. He mumbled a kind of rambling reply but I think it was, "I've lived in this town all my life and there's nothing here interesting enough to take a photo of." Well, I haven't, and the position of the sun in the sky at 6:40 pm on June 20th sure is interesting to me! But the current point of this story is that taking photos when by oneself in public places is confrontational.)

And then video. If I was taking videos of things in a public place by myself, I imagine it would be very extremely confrontational. Even along with someone else along as a cameraman, when I imagine taking a video of, say, the transaction of buying a pie at a McDonald's, or citing the mayor's driver's license, or having the guy at the magic shop show me where they keep the magic wands, it seems to me I would need to thoroughly explain the project first and what I plan to do with the video, and get everyone's first and last name and have them sign a waiver with permission to post the footage on the internet.

I don't yet have a video camera so I haven't had to sort this out, to try it and see where the points of discomfort are and what people's reactions will be. But won't it be interesting when I do?

More as it happens!