Ritual and Personal Space Installation

 When assigned this piece, I was faced with one major problem: I would be traveling for a cross country race during the duration of the project. Because of this limitation, I was forced to think of a way I could create ritual that did not rely on a specific place or area. My first idea for this project was to pick a time of day and whenever my alarm went off, I would have to drop everything I was doing and pour a cup of water on my head. I did this for the first day but eventually I changed the action to be different every day as pouring water on my head was a bit too disruptive to those around me.

I decided to set my alarm for 8:29pm and when it went off, I would have to empty my water bottle in the most creative way possible and then refill it. This forced me to pause what I was doing and reset as a way to refresh.

The first day, my alarm went off and I poured my water bottle on top of my head in the VK courtyard. I had a friend film so I had to fill her in but there were a few people in the courtyard who witnessed this action with no context.

The second day, I was working in the art building on a separate project when my alarm went off, so I went over to the second story of Whittier and flung the water off the balcony.

For the third day, I had just driven home so I had my mom film while I poured the water across the windshield of my car with the wipers going. Unfortunately, because these acts are so spontaneous, not a lot of thinking goes into it before and my mom ended up getting quite wet when the windshield wipers splashed the water directly onto her.

The fourth day, I had arrived in Hawaii for our cross country race so instead of the alarm going off at 8:29pm, it went off at 5:29pm right before we left for dinner. Unfortunately, my water bottle was already empty so all I had to do was fill it up.

For the last day of the project, the alarm went off when we were already at dinner with our team so the most realistic option was for me to dump my water in the bathroom sink of the restaurant we were at. This wasn't the most interesting day of the routine, but certainly got the most attention from those around me and sparked a good conversation about the arts afterward.

In the end, this was a very fun project that created a routine of forced creativity. I enjoyed thinking on the spot and having to drop whatever I was doing to focus on the art. However, I would have liked to have a little more structure in the project, or to have worked on it longer because I never felt like I fully created a true ritual.