The first project made us look at our own homes and the space that we are currently residing in. I decided to focus on the aspect of “rituals” and “emptiness” for my images, sounds and videos.

As I’ve been in my home for over a solid decade I have grown accustomed to it’s surroundings and it has very much become a part of who I am. Growing up in a singular environment – especially during your teenage year – really build certain processes or “rituals” in your everyday life as I have discovered. I realised that my whole family (consisting of my parent’s and I) have very specific and direct mannerisms when going about the house. Similar to the images above; our slippers will always be left at the door before we leave and I will always leave my bed unmade in the morning even if I have time to make it.

Of course as time has passed, things around the house has changed and therefore our rituals have changed as well. Such as gaining an extra laptop around the house, which then cut the amount of time my parent’s watched television as well as all of us purchasing smart phones. This all affected the way in which we carried ourselves around our home and changed the way we performed certain tasks. However, despite the changes, there are many aspects that we also keep the same, e.g. sitting by the heater, mum making sure I have fruit, our shoes…ect. In my selection I have a mixture of both the everyday dull “rituals” that we perform but at the same time my small interests and funny moments I see (i.e. my dog)

Another part of my home that I wanted to delve deeper into was the part about the “emptiness”. Since our family is rather small we often find the home empty and abandoned during the day especially if both my parents have any plans. I often find myself coming home to an silent house, where my parents have left certain places in certain ways as well as my mum often leaving her chores half done. It was easy to find myself alone to film/record and take pictures without distraction and this also made it easier to capture certain image because areas had been left in a specific way automatically due to familiarity.

However, this caused difficulty when I was trying to capture video and sound to portray this theme. I used footage of the washing machine and sound of the aircon to depict an quiet house where people have left items/tasks half completed and will eventual return to finish them. I feel like the washing machine footage best implies this idea, as in reality the washing is left overnight and then completed over 2 days.

Overall, this assignment was a slow and steady start to Specific for Site, by allowing me to look at my person home and space it also allowed me to start discovering how places can be affected by those who live within it’s confined spaces. Depending on if you’ve been there for a decade or for 10 weeks, each house and home is unique to those who live within them.

So for this week – in our excursion – we visited the Grainger Museum! Based on Australian artist, composer and pianist, Percy Grainger, the museum was actually built and showcases many items that were donated by Grainger himself!

I arrived a little late to the beginning but I still got to see 99% of the tour that we had, and the lady was really nice and had a lot of knowledge of Grainger and his life and she explained his different tastes in fashion, musical instruments and even sexual preferences!

The most interesting part for me was the fact that Percy Grainger was a sadomasochistic, and the images he took of whipping himself. Whilst that initially seemed strange to me, learning more about Grainger’s history, it became clear to me why he kept those images secret and that he did have a eccentric personality when it came to his music and clothing and so there should be no reason why his sexual preferences would have been different.

During out first lesson (With Robbie), we each sat around and discussed the first assignment about exploring our homes or our temporal environments. Going around in a circle, everyone talked about the different places they’re calling home at the moment.

I was surprised by the fact that many student were currently living in share homes or that some were only in homes for short periods of time before moving. For me personally, I’ve been living in the same home for almost the past 17 years of my life. My parents purchased my current home back when I was around 3-4 years old and we’ve been living there ever since, which gave me a different dynamic to those living together with other students or for those who haven’t been in their current house for a long time.

Apart from the fact that I’ve been at my house for almost 2 decades, it was also around 50+ years old and it had a lot of history to it. I explained that I wanted to focus on all the rituals that me and my family have engraved into the house and how, as a small family, the house has moments of abandonment and life all at the same time.

Overall, it was really interested and slightly inspiring to hear the environment and space that everyone else had been living in.