Sciences Participating with Arts & Culture in Education

Workshop 10: TASK activity (make)

These activities touch on a number of different ideas, and mostly revolve around being active, participating, working together, allowing for play, and breaking down barriers. 

• prepare a list of tasks that students pick at random and do  
• students can also write their own tasks for others – actions, creations, solo or group 

This activity has a wide range of possibilities, from making something to interacting with someone. It was designed by Oliver Herring. Here is a description from his Website: 

TASK is an improvisational event with a simple structure and very few rules. 

All TASK structures, the events, parties and workshops rely on the same basic infastructure: a designated area (usually but not necessarily made from construction paper), a variety of props and materials (cardboard, plastic bags, pencils, tables cling wrap, tape, markers, ladders…) and the participation of people who agree to follow two simple, procedural rules: to write down a task on a piece of paper and add it to a designated “TASK pool,” and, secondly, to pull a task from that pool and interpret it any which way he or she wants, using whatever is on (or potentially off) stage. When a task is completed, a participant writes a new task, pulls a new task, and so on. 

TASK’s open-ended, participatory structure creates almost unlimited opportunities for a group of people to interact with one another and their environment. TASKs’ flow and momentum depend on the tasks written and interpreted by it’s participants. In theory anything becomes possible. The continuous conception and interpretation of tasks is both chaotic and purpose driven. It is a complex, ever shifting environment of people who connect with one another through what is around them. It is also a platform for people to express and test their own ideas in an environment without failure and success (TASK always is what it is) or any other preconceptions of what can or should be done with an idea or a material. People’s tasks become absorbed into other people’s tasks, objects generated from one task are recycled into someone else’s task without issues of ownership or permanence. 

https://oliverherringtask.wordpress.com/

Some TASK examples: 

1. Rid yourself of the pocket lint in your right pocket by turning it into a flower blossom. Share it with the first person you see.
2. Talk with a southern twang for the rest of the party.
3. Join hands with three other people and ask someone else to play “Red Rover”
4. Go up to the person closest on your right and start planning your future together.
5. Dance like there’s no tomorrow
6. Run from one end of the gallery to another
7. Walk around singing a song by your favorite band
8. Hire a body guard
9. Give 20 high fives in ten minutes
10. Narrate your life story in two minutes to the closest person. Make them repeat the story to two other people.
11. Scratch someone’s back
12. Change everything
13. Knock something over
14. Make a wig and wear it
15. Make as many airplanes as you can in 15 minutes and then launch them 

Source: https://oliverherringtask.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/returned-tasks-isu.pdf