WOMB ROOM

Hello! Welcome!

My name is Jameisha Prescod. I’m an artist-filmmaker and writer from London. I’m excited to present to you the result of my residency with Vital Capacities.

The project I chose to develop is a work in progress called “Womb Room.”

“Womb Room” is an immersive project that asks a central question to people living with chronic womb pain:

If your womb were a place, what would it look like?

Since the project is currently in the ideation stage, I used the residency to help me figure out how to bring the project to life.

Throughout the residency, one word kept coming up for me.

PROCESS

Process.

Vital Capacities helped me slow down and figure out what my creation process would look like for this project.

The first stage of the process for Womb Room is to interview people living with chronic womb pain e.g. conditions like endometriosis, fibroids, adenomyosis etc.

It’s in this stage where I ask them to creatively re-imagine what their womb could look like if it were a place.

Here is an example of my interview with Lee, a yoga instructor with endometriosis from London.

“I honestly think that my uterus and my ovaries and all of my little reproductive organs I feel like it’s a beautiful garden. I think it’s a gorgeous, gorgeous garden. It’s lush, it’s fertile. It’s just spectacular to behold.

However, if I am not doing the right kind of gardening you know, like when I’m not doing the, the best in terms of staying on top of like diet and exercise and the things that I know help me to manage the inflammation…maybe my garden is becoming a little bit over on with thorns, or maybe there’s a few too many difficult weeds that need pruning.

I think when my endometriosis is flaring, and it’s not at its greatest, I like to imagine that maybe it’s just that I need to tend to the garden in a more sensitive way. Do a little pruning, maybe throw a little fertiliser on there. Maybe cut out some of the thorny rose bushes, you know. But I never like to imagine it as anything less than beautiful and fertile and just lush and gorgeous. Because I think, you know, despite what it may be doing that doesn’t feel ideal, it’s still this magical thing of complete, utter mastery that I just, I can’t help but like, be in awe of it and its beauty.”

During the residency, I wondered whether AI had a place within my process for this project.

I was apprehensive at first because I wanted my artistic skills to be directly tied to the final product without AI-generated imagery doing it for me.

I decided to experiment with using it for early research and pre-visualisation.

BIAS

I wasn’t expecting my use of AI to reframe how I thought of my own project.

Early images I generated which can be seen above exposed biases that exist with AI.

When I asked Midjourney to generate images of “wombs” or “uteruses” it either gave me imagery of babies or an inaccurate depiction of the organ.

Since then I haven’t stopped thinking about how these biases may still be within me and how to challenge them when I finally start producing Womb Room.

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I eventually asked Midjourney to produce a photorealistic image of a garden room from the interpretation of someone with endometriosis. These images are what it came up with. They were quite helpful in inspiring the final images.

This process also led me to think about ethics. I realised in asking people with womb pain to visualise and communicate to me what the insides of their wombs looked like, I was doing the same thing to Midjourney.

What ethical implications should be considered because of this?

With all the inspiration and research I did throughout the residency, I was able to produce a 3D generated image to reflect the experience of Lee.

With more time to develop this project, I would love to allow users to explore the visuals I create on their terms. I will probably implement to use of Unreal Engine for this, but further research and collaboration will be needed.

I intend for these rooms to be spaces for rest while listening to the voices of the people I interview. I want the project to be immersive. Users should be enveloped in sounds that relate to the 3D imagery I produce. Audiences will also hear calming music and voice-over recordings from the interviewees.

I included a mattress in the centre of the image. In some of the AI-generated images, beds are included. I was inspired by this because this imagery is another indicator of these spaces being for rest and healing. I want to include this as I expand the project.

Moving forward I hope to create visuals like these that can be both VR and in-person immersive experiences that allow an alternative and more engaging way to archive the experiences of people living with chronic conditions.