Rosa Francesca reflects on her recent Hatching Residency

Impetus and Intention

In early 2024 I suffered an illness that rapidly took over my life. I had been experiencing joint issues for a few years, and because of this illness I quickly deteriorated further to the point that I could barely walk or speak and became an ambulatory wheelchair user. I fully expected to be totally unable to walk by the end of the year, however after spending time in hospital I was able to massively improve my health and found myself gaining back my mobility.

After my hospital stay, I took a hiatus from work and found that my inspiration and motivation to create art was particularly lacking. By the time I reached the end of this break, I wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to take my art practice in. Early in my career, I did a lot more performance and installation work that focused on the body and accessibility. I decided to apply for a Hatching Residency (I have previously completed two different Nest Residencies) to start developing ideas around new art that makes use of my body and newfound mobility.

Motifs

My main focus was the movements I was unable to do during my illness: raising or extending my arms, jumping, crouching, bending over, and kneeling. My early art performances focused on creating music and art using as little movement as possible, whereas with this residency I wanted to achieve the opposite – I wanted to create audiovisual art that responds to large, pronounced movements and stretches.

Rehearsal

I spent a lot of my residency just making use of the space and my body by moving as much as I could. I learned TikTok dances and dance routines from music videos, and I often walked in circles around the studio to keep moving while I was brainstorming.

Development

For the technical elements, I learned how to send and receive MIDI data, and I used Brian Ellis’ website motion-to-midi.com to generate body tracking data from my webcam which I sent to the program Max MSP. Using this data I would be able to create animated visuals and audio based on my movements.

Before starting my residency, I had a lot of anxiety about returning to work, particularly the idea that I could get ill again and have to cancel; I had an intense fear of letting people down. Fittingly, I ended up getting a chest infection a few weeks into my residency. This turned out to be a blessing as it allowed me to realise my worst ‘fear’ wasn’t that bad, as I was able to return to my residency a few months later with fresh ideas and a more realistic view of my limitations.

My previous Nest Residencies have been about developing a particular project, without an output at the end, so the Hatching Residency was a bit different for me as it was more about developing ideas. Again, I had a lot of anxiety about potentially not having a ‘finished product’ at the end of my residency, but the Nest is such a welcoming place, so I didn’t feel pressure to create something finished and polished. I tried to concentrate on widening my toolkit and coming up with ideas that can be developed on in future work.

Form and Notation

As well as digital work, I did a lot of writing during this residency. I created diagrams of my body and virtual spaces and took lots of videos of myself dancing and doing stretches, which I also rendered in 3D. It was nice to have these pictures up in the studio to remind myself of my progress. It was also just fun recording videos of myself dancing without the pressure of anyone seeing! I studied Dance when I was younger, and was always told that my movements weren’t ‘big’ enough or my face wasn’t expressive enough, so it was a relief to dance with the knowledge that nobody is judging how I look.

Variation

Once I started the residency, I had an influx of ideas as I realised the versatility of the programs I was using. I played around with rigged 3D models of people and body tracking to translate my movements into CGI, and I created 3D environments decorated with chopped up elements of the videos I had been making. The results were rough and unpolished, but I loved the idea of slightly broken, messy motion capture because it kind of reflected the idea of my body moving in unpredictable ways a little beyond my control during my illness.

Reflection

Now that my residency has come to a close, I can happily say that the space to move around and express myself was absolutely invaluable. Sometimes I need a little push to remind myself why I make art and what I love about it, and this residency was a great motivator. I already have a plethora of ideas for future artworks!