Humans experience many coexistent and contrary needs in relation to any given space. We have a desire for socialising, communicating and being close to others and, in direct contrast, we desire privacy, individuality and opportunities for meditation and creativity. I am practice-based performance researcher and I explore these issues and how they signify human patterns, rituals, behaviours and performances of day-to-day life through my laboratories and further imagine how they relate as a space analogue missions.

As a human factors researcher, live artist and philosopher, I became a fully qualified commercial diver and founded the Aquabatics Research Team in 2002 to explore commercial diving and creative practices together in a unique union. Originally focused on making underwater performances, my work now spans aqueous live art, digital media, installation, prototype pneumatic technologies, philosophies and experiments with advanced life support and living systems.

My practice exists as both temporary and permanent forms of new media in the form of actual and virtual habitats. My creative process begins with research, writing, and publishing my ideas. I build sculpture and prepare an installation which then becomes the construction site and space for the undertaking of a performance. This performance is documented and sometimes broadcast live. The visual and audio recordings of the entire process and the products of the performance are collated and remixed into new digital products for distribution and secondary exhibition as evidence in galleries, on the internet and for worldwide distribution on DVD. 

Such a practice enables discussions of being, life and the critical climate in the way that it inspires correlations between/across various systems of our Universe. Aquabatics research is a unique, unconventional and innovative practice that draws on many histories and newly combined disciplines to propose a new aqueous philosophy. Development of the practice included trans-disciplinary documentation on the changes of my cognitive awareness, the aesthetics of care surrounding the practice, the spiritual journey and proprioceptive responses of the body underwater as a live(d) practice-as-research challenge. Commitment to this strategy enabled me to psychometrically profile and map new territories in human performance behaviours and limits in extreme environments as new works of live art. Inadvertently, Aquabatics proposed new aqueous philosophy to situate the human body in/of/as a body of water. (Pell, 2005)

I have learnt more about the spirit of my escapism and connection with the artist-as-envoy and artist-as-explorer behaviour inherent in my underwater performance ambitions since attending the International Space University and leading a presentation for Directors Colloquim at NASA Ames, US (2006). By extending my work in the Space and Defence sectors - often as the only artist - I have begun the process of developing an artist-as-astronaut in training practice by adjust ing my bodyclock to respect the Mars day-and-night cycle SOL instead of the 24 hour Earth day for instance and planning analogue simulation residencies and innovative research collaborations.

On a deeper level, I am considering the qualities of space through my own perceptions of time, distance and space both metaphorically and literally. Artists are well placed to translate the human factors of encounters with the world around us and in extreme environments. In my future postdoctoral research hope to address a broader provocation and that is: If I were to imagine the architecture of the future to be adaptive to the bio rhythms of the human species, how would we account for the specific bio rhythms of people living and working together underwater and in extreme environments on Earth as an analogue to outer space? Furthermore, what countermeasures or embrasive panaceas would be appropriate for quality of life?... 

I have presented in Australia, Asia, UK, Europe, Scandinavia and the USA. Highlights include the National Review of Live Art, Glasgow (2003), Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth (2004), ISEA The Baltic (2004), ARC Biennial Brisbane (2005) MAF Thailand (2005, 2006) Tract, Live Art Festival UK (2006) Reykjavik Arts festival, Iceland (2006) BOOM! International New Media Festival, Taiwan (2007) and a retrospective of Aquabatics at the Western Australian Maritime Museum (2005). I completed a PhD at Edith Cowan University, attended the SSP at the International Space University, France (2006) and I am artist-as-astronaut in training resident at Saksala, Finland 2007.

Dr. Sarah Jane Pell is currently an artist-researcher and Adjunct Lecturer, School of Anatomy & Human Biology, The University of Western Australia (2007-) home to SymbioticA: the art & science Laboratory. Shs is Founder/Director of Aquabatics Australia, and a member of the Space Generation Congress a youth advisory council to the Unitied Nations on Space Applications.

Websites

Website url: http://www.sarahjanepell.com/
Blog url: http://envoy2008.wordpress.com/

Areas of Practice

Artist, Scientist

My News