Dr Sarah Jane Pell - The Artistic Aquanaut

Full transcript: Dr Sarah Jane Pell on London Real

0:00 This is Sarah Jane Pell and you’re listening to London Real. tell us about his trips riding around China and around India with his brother and how they filmed those and will now be trying to sell those to television networks, which it sounds like there’s no simple thing about doing that. So there you go, but today we have on the show Ms. Sarah Jane Pell. This woman is fascinating.

1:01 She is an artist researcher that specializes in the underwater experience and you’ll see See when she starts talking that myself and my co-host James Dawson, we just shut the fuck up because she’s fascinating to listen to and when I was doing my research for her I was like, I don’t know what’s up with this woman. She’s a TED fellow, which in itself is no joke, but I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t get my head around an artist researcher. Is she an artist? Is she a researcher?

1:30 I know. But she’s both and she’s the real deal and she’s very impressive how she talks. She kind of was recommended to me by Rachel Armstrong, who you might have seen on the episode Earth’s Bright Future. And Rachel sends me just the cream of the crop, you know, she sends me these great minds. And I love mixing up the London Real kind of semi-famous people like Howard Marks with these scientists, you know, because it really, it makes you think about what’s going on in their heads and gets your idea around different perspectives, you know, I think it’s a nice change to throw in some scientist people and get more of a feel for that for London Real.

2:10 So I think you’re really going to enjoy Sarah Jane. Just listen to her that first 20 minutes, man, it’s just like my jaw almost drops. She’s a crazy mind and I love to see the fact that there’s an artist in there as well and that she’s not just a bookworm when it comes to her topic. So you’re going to love that and obviously next week we’ve got everything coming up with a bulletproof exec man he’s a really intelligent guy had some great things to say he’s he’s the real deal man I’m going on the bulletproof coffee diet myself and the coffee the diet everything because I think he really sold me and man I’ve read a lot of books about nutrition and I think there’s a lot of bullshit out there but I like Dave’s look and then the hip-hop preacher himself man this guy can talk I think he blew my microphones out at one point so apologies on the audio of that if that’s troubling I’m gonna see what I can do so because he got excited to say the least

3:36 it’s going to be exciting and that’s it just walk in the streets of shortage here I think and you get some nice backgrounds and if you want to come hang out with us you know we’re on Twitter we’re on Facebook if you’re listening to us on iTunes please subscribe and come see our faces on YouTube we’re releasing short clips these days and they’re a lot of fun like it kind of just snapshots into some of our old episodes like five-minute clips with Rupert Sheldrake, Dorian Yates, Jacque Fresco, man maybe we have interviewed a lot of cool people. We’re on like episode 90-something right now. We’re gonna be at 100 soon. You know, I never thought that would happen. That’s a little crazy. So yeah, I expect more cool stuff coming soon. If you want to intern with us, send me an email at info at LondonReal.tv. I’m still trying to kick this cold, so my voice is a little bad, but I should be back in full effect next week. But for now, I give you Ms. Sarah Jane Okay, shall we do this? Let’s have some fun. Okay, here we go. This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. With me today is Mr. James Dawson, who is a former guest on the show and founder of The Humble Grape, which is a wine cellar and also conducts wine tasting. You could

5:05 See James on the episode I titled, Grape Juice King. What do you think of that title? I’m not sure about it, if you’d asked me beforehand about a beat I didn’t. Yeah, I know. But if you want to see James, you can go check that show out and find out a bit more about him.

5:22 I also used to work with James in the city in my former years, but don’t hold that against him. And our guest today is Ms. Sarah Jane Pell, who is a TED Fellow and an artist researcher who is inspired by the creative potentials of extreme environments, most notably in her case, underwater. I kind of thought you might have fins or something. Gills, if you look closely.

5:47 I really wouldn’t be surprised. She’s done a lot of very interesting research and art. I believe you will be taking part, or have already taken part in the Atlantica Undersea Colony, which will keep three people living underwater for 90 days. Sarah, welcome to London. Thank you so much. It’s great to be here.

6:07 It’s awesome having you here. It’s a real pleasure. I was speaking with James earlier, and in all of my left brain glory, I was trying to figure out who this woman is, you know, because I’m trying to… Is she a researcher? Is she an artist?

6:21 Is she a commercial diver? And I became lost and confused, and I can’t be the first one to ask you that or to be confused because they don’t know what to do with you. So what is an artist researcher, and can you explain your relationship with the water? Absolutely. Okay.

6:36 Clarify and say perhaps that I’m an aqua bat or an aqua naught, but in real terms it’s easier to break it down for people. So my first passion, my first love is the arts, particularly the performing arts, and I’m interested in the body and how it moves in spaces, how it behaves and responds, and what I can do with that, aesthetically, creatively, as a studio practice. When I say I’m a researcher, I like to push the limits of that art making in that practice to the limits somehow.

7:08 So I’m investigating ideas. I start with a question. I’m curious about an issue, a topic, an idea, an unanswered question. And I used all sorts of mediums and disciplines in order to investigate that. I just throw it all in the mix.

7:23 And it’s very experimental. So it’s completely in line with the type of practices we see an artist use in a studio, for instance. But my research might take me into a laboratory. it might take me into a particular type of field research scenario, into an expedition, into a collaborative project, whatever it is, so that’s why I clarify and say artist-researcher. The other one is Diver. Most of my work, say for the last 12 years, has been focused on the body in extreme environments, usually underwater. I’ve looked at developing a kind of aqueous philosophy, I’ve looked at developing aquatic performances, I’ve looked at the nuts and bolts of commercial diving and what it means to live and work underwater, and all the sorts of spin-off possibilities that have arisen from that, whether that’s looking at the body in space analogue environments, for instance, when people dive underwater to train for space, looking at shadow water interactive play and exertion games underwater, all sorts of things.

8:36 So I think it’s easier to just say artist, researcher, diver, but in truth I guess I’m a bit of a young Leonardo, sort of an art and science kind of polymath, and I’m guided by the questions that I ask, I’m guided by my own curiosities and there’s no real mould which I neatly fit, but all of these things fall loosely under the umbrella of artist. Do you find that people try to push you in one way or the other? They’re trying to explain you as just an artist or just a researcher or?

9:09 Not anymore. No, okay. Okay, initially, absolutely, yes, and it would get to the point where I’d laugh, say a taxi driver would ask and be like, which one do I decide? Because if I can just spell out one of them, it would be easy. And friends would laugh because if someone said, oh, an artist, so is it oil or watercolor? And of course I would have to say watercolor.

9:29 So people bring these assumptions to any conversation, you know, they have a clearly defined definition for what an artist researcher or a diver is, but in truth I kind of blow them all out of the water. And why water, or have you ever been able to answer that question in your own mind of why you’re attracted to water or why you feel natural or creative in the water. I think it resonates with me on all number of levels. It’s a beautiful, kind of peaceful, calming space in which you can connect with yourself, with the environment, and I’m interested in the creative potentials there and the honesty or the truth about being in that space, in those spaces.

10:15 So for me, I guess if I look back to early childhood, I loved playing in the water. I loved being in the ocean. It was always almost dusk or twilight before I would come out of the ocean and my parents would be on the shoreline whistling and calling, trying to beckon me back in. And I was just, it was otherworldly. And when I went to art school, I was living in a metropolitan area.

10:41 I was doing painting and installation and sculptural work all about the urban environment and the city grid and the hum and noise, the white pedestrian noise of this city block. And I guess my escape, my escape into another space or another creative space was always to imagine the endlessness and the life that you find in an ocean space or an aquatic space and that breathing space that you’re conscious of in those environments and I sort of chose in my early 20s to redirect my entire career, my entire life towards investigating the possibility of an underwater studio and it began quite simply, I wasn’t even a diver. I looked at the possibilities, I started talking with various professionals from hyperbaric technicians to other types of divers and artists and so on, and said, look, I want to have a studio underwater, I want to perform underwater, I want to not only perform for an audience but create or construct a space in which I perform as well. So really having a studio space, creating the parameters to explore something new, to bring something new out of myself into my work. And I imagined I’d literally be painting underwater. I imagined I’d literally be just using that environment as a catalyst or inspiration, as my new muse for a new body of work. I didn’t imagine that 12, 15 years later I would still be sort of completely immersed in this type of thinking. But the further I got into it, it seemed that I would not only need to become a recreational

12:34 Diver, but I would have to become a commercial diver. And that meant everything from learning to weld underwater, to using a jackhammer, to all those glamorous things. You can do those things. I can do those things. Okay.

12:46 I believe you. That commercial divers do. And in one way it’s absolutely absurd to, somehow, you wake up one morning and find yourself underwater in a cold dam at six degrees Celsius over your head in mud with a rope tied to around your waist to the surface using an umbilical and air supply via an umbilical using tools that you would never never and do performing work that you would never do on land or I certainly wouldn’t do on land and there’s a kind of ridiculousness in that discovery you find yourself in this situation going what am I here for what am I doing? But there’s a beautiful opportunity in that as well to understand how the body responds to body shocks, how the body responds to these new stimuli, how the body and how you emotionally engage with these protocols and these processes and these strict disciplines and these procedures, and then the really human side of being cold and working long hours and being sore and being tired, and then that additional layer of trying to creatively imagine from within that space, projecting yourself somewhere else, imagining you’re floating in space, imagining that you’re somewhere else, and so having kind of a a split awareness, if you like, being very present in the physical body, but also being incredibly connected to the environment, the situation, and something beyond. And it’s that sort of seduction or that possibility of something beyond that has kept me returning

14:36 Over and over and over to this space. I think that… It’s hard we’re just both mesmerized. Is this more of a self-discovery process for you than a researcher performing art? Because it seems like you’re just trying to see how you react in these environments.

14:55 What happens to you? Yes. I think a big part of… Certainly where the work began as well, a big part of it was autobiographical, which is not uncommon in the arts at all then. But I found myself, I started to direct all of this work towards a PhD, and in that context, you run up against human research ethics committees and so on in the kind of academic structure.

15:20 And I needed to argue and look very closely at why on earth you would be the principal researcher and the principal research subject, and how ethically you could delineate and validate your research from that kind of position and through that processing and through that kind of understanding, I was able to argue some kind of strong points, retrospectively I can say that, for the rationale, for being able to provide some unique insights into the kind of, not only the psychology and the physiology but also being able to report back of the choreographic and creative potentials. Objectively. Not necessarily.

16:07 But that’s what made it interesting. And that’s what made it interesting. And saying, well, in fact, this is precisely the type of reporting that is missing. And if we look at, just to use another analogy, if we look at explorers of extreme environments, whether that’s, say, the Arctic or the polar regions or the outer limits of space, for For instance, the way we relate most personally to those experiences are through the writings, through the storytelling, through the explorers who have been able to translate not just what they did, but how it made them feel, what their experience of it really was, what their making process was, how they face challenges, what they learnt etc etc etc. So I went through that process and tried to live it and I used the framework of live art which is not, it’s kind of a budding tradition if you like in Australia. Australia had a kind of a clear sense of what performance art was but the live art traditions were a little hazy so I ended up coming to the UK and the live art sort of has a pretty clear definition here.

17:31 Can you explain the difference between performance art and live art? It’s a bit hazy. I think live art is sort of almost a bit, okay, performance art, just to try and give it a framework, performance art came out of things like land art traditions, more installation and political-based things, more situational type work. And the live art traditions have melded with performance and technology in different types of political ways. So the resulting work is relatively similar.

18:15 What’s an example of one of your live artworks? I mean, James and I have watched some of your videos on YouTube, but for people that don’t know you, can you explain some of your early work or recent work because it’s pretty unique. Okay so one of the things that I was initially confronted with working underwater and living underwater was this two-fold experience of being in a confined space and having a limited air supply or precious air pocket, a breathing space and also being acutely aware of my own respiratory system and how that affected performance. So I created a performance piece which was performed maybe four or five times in different environments where I put my 6 foot 1 body inside a 50 centimeter high hemisphere spherical, sort of a clear perspex hemisphere and my body was sort of contorting underneath that and I would start these performances with the hemisphere just sitting on the ground and my body inside it 50 centimeters a half a meter half a meter and you’re squeezed inside this inside that and it’s underwater it’s on the land it’s not full of water it’s not full of water okay okay it’s just full of air full of air okay okay so an audience sees and it doesn’t look dangerous at all there’s you know what’s a big deal you’re underneath the hemisphere it looks a little uncomfortable but that’s fine but as the body starts moving and moving through the space the condensation builds up the CO2 builds up and the oxygen

19:56 Starts to deplete and of course the hemisphere suction caps and seals to the floor so the performance then is about sort of trying to move it and push it along and to kind of clear that gap. But as the cycle sort of continues, more and more condensation builds up, you have those beautiful titanic moments. More CO2. More CO2 and you can kind of swipe away, the moisture is very beautiful. But do you not start feeling anxious as it progresses? No, well it becomes kind of meditative and as everything heats up and builds up, everything becomes sweat and slippery. So you start to slide around in this little space and it becomes, something that was kind of uncomfortable becomes very embryonic. And as much as the audience can no longer see in, I can no longer see out.

20:50 So I’ve suddenly created this other little, this other world, this other world and in order to perform and survive in this other world, I must be very conscious of my performative actions. I must be very conscious of conserving my breath and my energies. So everything has to be natural, everything has to be fluid, everything has to be relaxed. Any type of anxiety will build up and increase and decrease the oxygen levels obviously. So it becomes, the performance inside that becomes sort of twisted and contorted and a little bit embryonic. So for the audience they’re watching this fully-grown adult inside this space that looks like a fetus within a womb.

21:36 Are you on a stage at this point? Are people walking around you? On a stage. Usually the stage, the seating is such that the performance begins just with I’m out of sight and they’re getting live video feed and they don’t know it’s real. And then I kind of appear and come into the space and there’s quite a long performative trajectory and the live video feed at some point cuts out because there’s no longer anything to see and they are acutely aware that I’m this tiny little human body in front of them that’s grappling with this physiological or this constraint and they are suddenly sitting there not knowing whether they’re meant to intervene so it becomes this duty of care type issue that I have with my audience and vice versa, which is similar to the relationship a diver would have with a support crew on the surface. Now, normally I had 16 minutes of air and sometimes when there are cues and I’ve had one instance where the sound technician, the cue was to cut the lights off and I would come out and the audience would never see me break the seal. But a sound technician and got lost track of time, he was just off in his other world and it took 30-35 minutes and then he realised and I’ve had situations like that.

22:58 So you weren’t double the time that you were going to be there? Double the time and the performance was absolutely intense as you can imagine and by that I was absolutely exhausted and then I’d go through a whole post performance sort of observational period and rehydration and you know just under observation just like I would be had I’ve been diving, had I been having performance care, so that in a sense is a ritual, it’s a performance, it’s a type of installation, it’s a type of relationship with the audience that we would call live art. Okay, because you’re not performing per se, you’re doing something and they have a range of emotions from panic to, like you said, trying to help you.

23:41 And it’s not just stunt and spectacle, it’s not like theatre where I have a script, I set up the parameters, I’ve got a challenge and then I commit to showing that vulnerability to exposing and being true in the moment and having the kind of courage or whatever it is to just be raw in that moment. And did you feel that there was almost like a kind of therapy that maybe days afterwards you felt some changes in you and there was something going on there. I loved it. Did you not explain? I loved it and I loved that performance and I remember the last time I performed it and someone said listen you know you oh people would try and they would wait around after this post-performance thing to come and touch me afterwards. I felt that it was such a violating experience. I hated that. Yeah because you’ve just come out of the womb.

24:39 I’ve just come out of the womb, I’ve just had my little quiet time, I’ve just been off in this gorgeous kind of imaginative space. They want to touch you, not just talk to you. They want to touch you. And it’s the way of reassuring themselves that I’m okay. I understand that. So strangers, complete strangers are waiting in the foyer or a green room for hours to do it. You need some bounces.

25:00 So on the last performance, I thought all right, this is ridiculous. So I sat myself on a stool at the end of the performance completely disclosed the fact that I took my little dome off and I could discuss and I could sit there with the audience and they could touch me as they wished and they all stood around to me and stayed and talked about their experience of the work so they just anyway at the end of it I was exhausted they had completely dumped their entire life and they walked away feeling fabulous they hadn’t feeling fabulous and I felt rotten and I never to this day I left the time in the gallery and I never went back and I’ve never performed it how long ago was that 2005 so you haven’t performed that for eight years and the first time you performed it was 2002 but I loved that work but that’s just an example of one of the works so yeah so from the experience of diving I just take this one small component because you know I can’t often get an ocean in a gallery or a museum. Curators just don’t like that. So I try and take this one aspect that I can amplify somehow for an audience. That sounds like a heavy thing to watch. It sounds more emotional than any Cirque du Soleil that I’ve seen.

26:17 It does but it sounds to me almost that that kind of activity could be very beneficial for some people. I mean I think we all struggle to meditate and we all struggle to be in the moment and be at peace with ourselves and if If you can do something like that and avoid being touched afterwards, I think personally that could be for some people who can control that and control their breathing and control what they’re doing during the time. They’re doing that and slow stuff down and try not to be wasteful and be mindful of what’s going on.

26:48 If you do that on your own, I think it could be quite a powerful experience. Well, were you careful not to, you can’t practice it, right? Because if you’re not in the moment, experiencing panicking, then that’s not your art, right? No, true. certain elements that I would look at, little things like I’ll just do it from here to there and just film a little bit to make sure my underpants aren’t going somewhere strange or those kinds of things just to work out so that I could relax. Okay. I could relax but then then I have to trust the process too so it is a little bit as you say a little bit meditative it’s a little bit it’s a little bit like dance it’s a little bit like what a free diver would talk about so there’s partly that kind of yoga type aspect to the work where you have both the discipline and the kind of mental surrender that you need in a way to be able to undertake the work efficiently and smoothly but also there’s enough of awareness too that I’m a performer there’s my audience I can higher to heighten this bit. And the other thing I do is amplify my breathing so I have a microphone inside with me so that not only am I concooned and cook off it like a like a being inside a conch shell or something the entire audience feel like they’re completely surrounded in this space too.

28:15 Yeah I noticed that on your videos on YouTube that audio is a really important part of her art because it’s magnified and it really yeah it brings a lot of emotion and empathy into what you’re doing. Well, this is all the experience is divers. So if you’ve…divers would know that when you put the breathing apparatus on, you’re constantly aware of your breath and any changes in your breathing or your breath or respiration are immediately…they supersede any other sound that you’re going to listen to during that period of time.

28:51 Even after fifteen hundred hours of diving. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you’re so acutely attuned to your breath. I mean, you know where you are in the water because of, you know, the way your lungs are filled. You know where you are, you know what you’re doing, you know how fit you are, how you’re performing, you know whether it’s the slightest contaminant or whether you have the slightest congestion.

29:17 I mean, you’re pretty conscious of that. It becomes part of your, it’s your tool, it’s, you know, it’s your body, it’s your life. So… To just to get, so people have a bit of a range of some of your other performances, what is one other thing that, what is one of your highlights that maybe is a little bit different than that one that, to give people an idea of the other kind of performances you do? one where there was a spherical transparent piece on your head where you were I don’t know if that’s the one you want to describe but that’s one that I saw and there was one where you were flying. In a big wheel rolling down a beach and then into one with wings underwater okay choose one but what’s another one that’s represented. I’ll give you a pair, the wings one and I was fascinated by da Vinci and his work. So I took some studies of his wings from the Natura History Museum and I created a full lifestyles version of this apparatus that was designed for flight and of course I had to try it out underwater.

30:26 So the original sketch showed that you should be using chicken wire and rabbit skin glue and all these sorts of elements and cane and I used these elements and wore it in a pool and completely shredded my forearms so we readjusted it and I used a beautiful thin perspex sorry a plastic sheeting over the wings and then I attempted to perform underwater to fly underwater so the performance itself is a little bit like Icarus you know in my feeble attempts When he goes too high it’s just a struggle and nothing particularly beautiful. This ambition is ridiculous and it was beautiful but but it was this kind of performance of failure if you like or of ambition but when I surrendered to it when I drew the because it can you imagine trying to use your upper body strength to flap like a bird with the water yes two and a half meter long I mean even with a two meter fin on your legs that would be hard work so so you’ve got these two literally two enormous fins that you’re trying to work and propel it doesn’t work like that at all. Well there’s no example of any sea animal with a bigger fin than its body. So if you put the fins back, the fins wings back, as if you’re in a dive position and diving down then they’re incredibly streamlined and so powerful in their design and efficiency that I But I went down into the water so fast that it was almost really, really difficult and dangerous to create the drag that was required to stop my descent.

32:14 And that kind of footage is beautiful as well. So in parallel to that work, so the da Vinci wings on one side, I had the da Vinci wheel. And of course, I needed to wear a frock, as you do, and be the female body in the da Vinci wheel, and roll along the seashore, along, along, along, over and over and over, and then into the water, repeatedly into the water, dunking and dunking myself. So it referenced all sorts of water rituals, water wheel rituals, etc., etc., but it was also about a kind of recalcitrance, about this kind of defiance of this woman choosing to do this, choosing to go from the land back into the sea.

33:01 And I just like the play. It was really quite a playful performance as well. But you seemed so relaxed as you were rolling, even as your face went into the water. You just seemed relaxed when you emerged on the other side, you were just calm and seemed to be enjoying yourself. It wasn’t like you were freaked out every time you got dunked.

33:16 No, well, I was freaking out a little. We had only a few hours to shoot, and there was an enormous thunderstorm coming. And you can see it in the background of the film footage. And so they’re in line with it, strapped in, literally strapped in. So if I fell over, if there was shells or rocks which were scattered all over the beach, if the wheel got thrown off balance, I was literally strapped in, it would have been.

33:41 Face plants. Big time. Could have been a tremendous injury. But yes, I was trapped in and I was worried about getting electrocuted, we’ve got electric and storm coming and I’m going into the water and strapped to a metal wheel. That’s ridiculous.

33:56 So those are good examples of your art. And I was wondering if you could give us an example of some of your research. Now, the Atlantica project sounds pretty epic to me. Oh, that’s huge, that’s huge. That’s not my specific project.

34:08 Right, that’s not your specific, but you’re gonna participate in it, right? That’s right, that’s right. So the mission commander is a fellow by the name of Dennis Chamberlain and he and his wife are both seasoned explorers. They’ve been involved in other subsea habitat projects. They are setting up a mission for a two-stage mission. The first is a 90-day subsea habitat project that leads into a permanent colony which will be situated in Florida Keys. So Dennis is a NASA engineer and this is a private project and we have collaborators from all around the world participating in this so the intention is for the three of them the husband and wife team and one other Aquanaud will spend the 90 days and there are a group of us about 24 of us who are coming and going in five-day increments and we will be supporting the project playing cards and stuff are they doing them to perform are they underwater but breathing oxygen or they actually submerged how does it work they’re going to live in effectively like a caravan underwater they’re going to have like a submarine like a habitat yes that’s more at the bottom so we will be obviously going into decompression because we will be ascending and descending and we and therefore we will be able to go out into the ocean and perform but these guys are going to be and how deep is that well I’m not allowed to technically say all right yes but deep enough to be deep enough to be stable

35:38 Actually so not scary. Has this been done before? For non-military reasons do we know if anything like that’s been done before? This will be the longest undersea habitat project. So one of the people on the program, the current record is only 69 days. So we have the record holders on this project as well and this is a civilian project, it’s an international project and it’s really exciting but if you compare to the type of projects we have in space for instance we’ve had people who’ve spent more than a year in space so there’s a huge difference and I think we imagine that we’ve spent all this time underwater but the truth is we really haven’t unless we’ve been in submarines and less we’ve been doing other types of things. What happens to your body if you stay in that environment what are you know there’s a lot of documentation about what happens to people in space and how they have to recover when they it back. Do we know what happens in the underwater environment? Yes we do and it’s similar on many levels and so we have the risk of decompression illness which is prevalent in all types of diving or all activities where you’re breathing air underwater and that just literally means that you have an increase in nitrogen in the body and the body needs to expel that and get rid of that nitrogen. And if there is an inhibitor or if you ascend too quickly or if there’s a problem, decompression illness can cause, I mean, eventually it can cause

37:08 Death. So we know this. There are also some longer term issues. There are immediate hazards for the longer term issues with bone necrosis and all sorts of symptoms and problems that we see with divers. Yeah, a lot of old divers in the past as they got older, they would find a lot of these problems from this continued exposure to the nitrogen, right around in the deep across.

37:33 We kind of colloquially just call it the silent bubbles. There are not that many communities in the world where we have some really good medical understandings or records about the long term exposures of this. We have short duration understandings and hyperbaric knowledge is fantastic. But for the long duration divers, people who are repetitive bounced divers, for instance, all of their lives, pearl divers, for instance, we can look to the local communities and see the elderly and see that they have rickety legs.

38:04 We can see that they have all sorts of problems, but we don’t have great studies to draw from in that area. Now, what do you say to the person that says, why do we do this, Sarah? We’ve got people in the Space Station, International Space Station, that stay up there for a year on and yeah, they save you. Why? Well, part of it is just the human curiosity.

38:26 I mean, we are natural explorers. We naturally seek answers to extraordinary questions, I think, both to understand ourselves, but also to understand how to protect our species, how to better support and sustain our lifestyle as a species. So I think being an explorer as a natural part of life. I mean, I’m fascinated by the space analog environment of the ocean. But I’m also deeply fascinated about what we can do as human beings to protect and be custodians of the planet and the environment in which we have.

39:03 And I honestly believe that these kinds of projects, like the Atlantica project, are incremental steps or necessary steps for us being able to have a human presence in remote stations around the world, around the globe, around our various oceans, in order to be able to monitor, to be able to work, to live and work, to ensure there’s a kind of a harmonious, sustainable approach to environmental monitoring. And I noticed that those people in the Leviathan have to learn extremely hard not to be wasteful. Yeah.

39:44 And you could take some of the learnings from that and extrapolate that to our lives on a day-to-day basis, we just waste a lot. And it’s like carbon dioxide, everything you’re gonna be monitoring. Absolutely. And look, we don’t have, the attempt is to be able to develop a zero waste culture. And that’s our dream, that’s our ambition.

40:02 We don’t have anything, there’s no such thing, there’s nothing that we can look at on this planet or off this planet that we can say is a complete closed loop. So a lot of my work in various ways, I’ve worked with the International Space University on a NASA-sponsored project, developing a closed-loop habitat system for the Moon, and we explored all of the types of systems that were currently in existence. We mashed them together. We kind of literally created a mock-up that incorporated this type of engineering aspect from this country and this demonstrated technology from this project, et cetera, et cetera, and put them all together on what we thought would be the penultimate type of advanced life support system as we know it today to achieve a closed loop and we were still only at about 90% and that was the highest achievable that they had ever, to that date they had come across. So in real life there’s no such thing as really blocking it off. I suppose even the earth isn’t a closed loop. Absolutely not. There’s always a transfer and I think I try to look at that performatively as well. I try to look at that exchange, whether it’s on this level with the body and the breathing, whether it’s on this level with an audience member or a human being, but also what does that say? How can those little localised gestures speak about the politics of the wider social condition or the wider environmental condition, or our human nature and our human technology and

41:39 Where we’re going, I mean, how can we critique the natural future extension of what we’re talking about? Yeah, this is all very valuable research and I can see how it can be beneficial for the future. How do you get funding for this? Is it environmental agencies or do you have to get it privately? How does that model work for you?

42:00 Ah, a real mixture. It depends on the kind of work. So if I’m talking about if the projects is fitting into the artist category, it sort of looks towards one type of funding support. If it’s couched in art and science research, there are other options available. If it’s the artist being involved in global interdisciplinary projects, then obviously we look really broadly. So I freelance, I work from project to project, I work internationally, I work in Australia and there’s no rhyme or reason. I look for the best kind of support for the project and the ideas and I look for the with the best kinds of collaborators to achieve that goal so there’s no fixed body. I keep thinking of the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. You’ve seen that movie? Yes. Mr. Carl Stromberg he’s that crazy evil villain that wants to live underwater and he’s gonna nuke the whole crazy are you sure absolutely he wants to nuke the world and he’s living under sea and he’s got all the fish and stuff I mean we could talk but this can’t be the first time you’ve heard absolutely you know what I’m talking about I thought you’re gonna say I look like a bond girl but no you’ve insulted me with this well that’s just obvious that wouldn’t be very creative for me but you know he had the sharks that you know killed anyways so okay fair enough um so can I just say yes that I haven’t performed for a while okay so more of my work in the last few years has been more diving work but also research-based work

43:50 Working with the European Space Agency to develop an arts initiative working with an exertion games lab developing technologies for playful interactions underwater, those kinds of things. So while this research has many aspects, and my job title, my job description just gets pulled apart and pushed back together over and over and over, it sort of all comes together under a future vision of living and working underwater. Can I say that? I say that sheepishly. And the analogies you have with space and all that kind of stuff. I would imagine the research for living underwater is not even at thousands of what it is people living in space. That’s true. I thought you were about to say that you miss performing. I thought you were gonna do some performance with a glass of water or something. I do. I miss performing actually. Can you spin the glass around a few times without any water spinning up? No, not with a microphone. Will you perform again? Is that like, because when you describe your art you seem like someone who needs to perform I do you must be an artist at your core yes so everything is a little bit performative okay but I haven’t been doing a great deal of performance and that’s that is a bit of a problem that is a bit of a struggle but because performance is lacking in the research community right I mean you must bump into a lot of sciences there isn’t any they’re introverts like they probably don’t

45:15 Even like talking let alone performing I’m sorry I apologize to but you must be quite unique in that field yes yes and that’s a good thing and there’s a good, I like to come into a space, a collaborative space and be the disruptor and to turn the conversations around a little bit, you know, let’s not go with all of our assumptions, let’s look at the language we use and let’s not take anything for granted because you’re part of an interdisciplinary group and suddenly rules are no longer rules, rules that we know it. And the terms of engagement change and that’s a fantastic way of creating or both working towards new discovery, but it’s a great way to, I guess, purposefully bring about creative thought, different types of discussions, and potentially lead to new types of innovation. So process-pacting ideas from all sorts of things is kind of fantastic.

46:10 I thrive in those environments. I love it. So I love talking to engineers. I love talking to astronauts. I love talking to fishermen who have been out on the water for 30 years and who know the ocean back to front and not just through what they observe but their stories and the poetry that comes from living that type of life. That’s just for an artist.

46:34 This is all just like being in a global playground every day. So I feel a little… What reactions do you get usually from the scientific community, all these people, when you push their buttons? I can, yes. But also, you know, at least I get introduced, I’m a doctor, I say, you know, that helps.

46:54 Some street cred. Get some street cred, okay. So they don’t necessarily know, I don’t come from a science background. But I’ve also, since completing my PhD, I have actually studied at the International Space University and Singularity University at NASA Ames, so I’ve stepped into those communities, I’ve deliberately attempted to learn the language of those groups of engineers and scientists working particularly in those areas, both in the innovation and start-up community, entrepreneurship, big thinking, blue sky thinking, but also the groups who are working on long-term visions for human space flight and exploration.

47:36 It helps to be able to recognize that language and it helps to be able to use that language to reflect back and to translate or communicate some of the ideas that I might bring to it. Now, going to your street cred, you are also a TED fellow. Yes. Now, what is that like and what is that and that must help a lot and I hate saying street cred but… TED fellow without the X, yeah?

48:01 Yeah, without the X. Yes, that’s a big thing. you saw that but I mean that must also help when you walk into these communities a little bit but could you explain what it is and how it’s changed your life if it has? The only Australian titular. Yes I should yes. I like that. Now there are two TED fellows who are living in Australia but yes.

48:21 Okay so TED stands for Technology Entertainment and Design and it’s a kind of a global conference phenomena, which has now got extraordinary reach through its online presence as well as its live presence. And that has been extended, as you say, through the TEDx events, which are the locally hosted regional events. So the TED platform is an opportunity for ideas worth spreading. And it’s not just limited to technology, entertainment, and design. It’s open to broad entrepreneurship, journalism, social and political activism right through across the board.

49:03 So you have an extraordinary amount of speakers coming to present in this quite tight format, their ideas. And the TED Fellows program was set up to enable, I guess, the budding TEDsters, if you like, to have an opportunity to be a part this extraordinary community and in some ways enable this extraordinary community to mentor and support and to come in contact with those who have in some way, I think they describe it as someone who’s shown exceptional courage, talent and promise in the kind of area of expertise, or interest, or life, or what have you. And the other unique aspect is that the Ted Fellows program is curated.

49:54 So the fellowship, there are 20 to 25 individuals selected in each fellowship round. And it’s a curated fellowship, so they examine all of the applicants, thousands of applicants, so that you get a group of people together who have this natural affinity. And so for me, I was given a TED, or awarded a TED fellowship in 2010. And I walked in and met these people. And honestly, it was like a family instantly.

50:28 And we were all so inspired and by each other and supportive of each other. And the synergies were so apparent and so multi-layered that it didn’t matter whether in that case I had come from the remote west coast of regional Tasmania where I had been diving, repetitive diving here two hours a day, four or five days a week in total darkness doing really manual work away from the rest of the world with limited communications with the outside world. I went from that right to Long Beach, California to this extraordinary event with other fellows who had come from all over the world and we just clicked together as a group. And we’ve continued to build projects together, to support each other, to work together and Ted gives you a platform to speak as well.

51:23 Okay. Now Rachel’s a senior fellow, right? That’s right. What is… Okay, so the Ted Fellows have an opportunity to put in a single application to become a a TED Senior Fellow at some point. So the fellowship lasts for a year where you’re taking to one of the big TED conferences and you’re supported and you’re given a life coach and you’re mentored. And then the TED Senior Fellow proposes both a project and kind of commits to developing something further for five years and going to five different TED events. So I haven’t putting my application yet, but I would dearly love to be a senior fellow.

52:09 Okay, and can you tell us a little bit about Rachel? I mean, she’s the one that recommended that you apply for the TED fellowship, is that right? That’s right, yes. Rachel, I had first been introduced to Rachel at an extraordinary conference called Mutamorphosis, and I was aware of her science fiction writing and her work that looked at this speculative fiction for an alien world, where she described the human condition in these extraordinary terms, in these extreme environments. So naturally I was intrigued. And then I learnt that she was also a medical doctor who had been advising and working with all different types of practitioners, including a lot of live artists. So she had worked with Stellark and the types of surgery and procedures that he needed to go through working with prosthetic arms and prosthesis and kind of invasive technologies within his own body and all in order to augment it and augment its performance. So we had this natural kind of community and connection. Rachel now is working the realms of biotechnology and our communities kind of overlap.

53:25 She was our guest a few months ago you can see her on our episode called called Earth’s Bright Future, a better title maybe than the great Yeah, and her Twitter handle is at living architect I think and yeah she’s got some fascinating ideas, long-term stuff. I have to ask you a bit about Ted. I mean Ted there’s so many good talks, so many of our guests have been Ted speakers before. I don’t know if we’ve had many Ted fellows before. Now you know lately Ted’s got a little heat because they’ve pulled a few lectures off their websites. We had we’ve had Graham Hancock in here Rupert Sheldrake and some of their episodes were kind of taken off and put back on and there was a guy named Eddie Huang who was a fellow in LA who walked out on the TED conference after six days and said it was oppressive because he had to stay there all day what do you what I had to ask you what do you say to that do you have any comment has Ted been good to you Ted’s been extraordinary to me okay I’m a bit of a Ted Fan. So for me it’s been an absolute privilege and it’s one of the most exciting arenas that you can be a part of and I think they do a tremendous job of not only curating the events but curating the talks and there’s an element to that like any live performance where there are going to be little hiccups and bumps and 99.9% of that is broadcast to the world And still, you know, some of my talks haven’t been put on line yet.

54:51 I mean, there’s an enormous backlog, there’s an enormous wealth of contributions that have been made to the TED program. And I think TED handles it really well. There’s been some expectation, I think, as TED’s got bigger and bigger and bigger, that it’s, you know, it’s infallible, it’s this huge giant, but really it’s still the same individuals and the same format and people volunteering themselves, their ideas, putting themselves on the line to communicate and to nurture this idea of ideas worth sharing or ideas worth spreading. I think that’s a beautiful thing and I think these little, when something gets so big I think people try to look for kinks in the armour and think it’s okay to throw dirt, is that the expression?

55:40 They’re comparing it to Scientology and it’s like everyone has to kind of fit in and do this and go to the conferences and do that, so. Well, I think there is a certain expectation for fellows and that is participation. So if you have been flown over from your particular part of the world, and the event has only for a few days, the idea is that you participate. And as you say, their fellowship is curated. It’s not just the talk that’s been commissioned.

56:07 Yeah, it’s like learning real people participate, they give their time for free and then something beautiful comes from it. The curation is interesting because you were put together with all these like-minded people and that sounds like that’s been a huge benefit for you. Absolutely. I guess as the public we just see the talk, but you’re saying there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. Absolutely.

56:28 So we’re given the opportunity, we have all sorts of events and opportunities we have. as coaches, we have opportunities to network, to look at collaborative potentials together, to support each other. And of course, we’re kind of the fellows. We all stick together. I mean, there’s a huge community out there, extraordinarily successful people who have achieved a lot.

56:50 So the Tedsters themselves are just, you know, kind of an inspirational audience. And the Tedsters, we’ve flown in from, it could be a tiny little village in the middle of Africa. So we support each other through that process and it’s a great privilege to have that support structure and I think they’re very aware of making sure we have a space to go to, to be together, to come together and to nurture each other through that. Otherwise it can be a bit daunting.

57:19 Fair enough. No, I I mean overall Ted. I mean the talks are you know, they’re they’re genuinely consistently good yes, you know if you tell you tell someone there’s a Ted talk, you know, you can expect a certain level of Relevance competence all that good stuff puts a bit of pressure on yeah, it’s nice in a way. It’s like a step up How many talks have you given a Ted? I’ve had Ted itself. Yeah, I’ve only given the one the one the TEDx one No Ted Ted in Long Beach in Long Beach. Okay, and then I’ve given a number of TEDx talks Okay, so more and more will come online. Were you nervous for Ted?

57:57 Yes. Yes. Yes. I um, it would she’s like this I only spoke recently about this with the Ted Fellows director, but Just before I went on stage a fellow who had assisted us with the coaching of the slides beforehand just said, I think you should really hide a few of those slides, you’re going to put a lot, a lot of the audience, they’ll be, no, they’re off, like you’re going to put them, they’re going to be uneasy about seeing these types of images. Like you confined to the 50 centimeter ball. And look, the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind until that point, just before I was about to go on. And that made you nervous, I suppose.

58:33 I did and I thought, in some way should I be holding back? Should I somehow kind of be apologizing for this work. And it wasn’t until about halfway through the talk that I went, you know, I’m here. This is what it is. I need to put myself on the line and this is the work and be strong about that. There’s so much pressure you can feel it in the TED people when they go out because it’s what you said it’s either 13 minutes or 18 minutes. Well a lot of and the TED Fellows we have what is called a TEDU which is the University, TED University which is program beforehand and we have an audience of say 500 people to start to smooth us into the Big Ten and we give three-minute talks. Now that is harder you’ve got to have the same amount of punch and clarity and you’ve got to be able to transport an audience and do exactly what you do in an 18-minute talk in three minutes and if that’s your only shot if that’s all they ever see of you it’s got to be a good three minutes.

59:31 It’s like a comedian, you know, three minutes isn’t much. You see people get up there and it’s like, okay, they wanna be witty, they wanna be relaxed, they wanna be relevant, they wanna try to teach you something in, okay, 13 minutes. It feels like 11 minutes. And yeah, it’s, you know, the lights are on, right? So any typical people about to go and speak in front of a huge audience like that?

59:51 Because I always feel fairly relaxed and confident as I get up there, whether there’s 20 people or 50 people or 500 people, and I do this at least twice a month. always kind of hits me. So tips for us. There are some instances where I feel uncomfortable but generally speaking I think it’s about if you know your staff if you know what you’re about to talk about and you feel passionate about it you haven’t been coerced into speaking about something you’re not interested in then you’re going to be able to deliver and I think one of the nice things I do is I can do breathing I can do physical things I can do performative warm-up things. But one of the nicest, most reassuring things is to look at an audience beforehand and go, they really want me to succeed. They don’t want to watch someone bumbling. They don’t want to watch someone coughing or choking on the words. This audience really wants me to just blow them away.

1:00:45 And somehow that just calms everything. It’s like, nobody wants you to fail here. So you don’t even have to think about that. Wow. Say I’m an extremely wealthy benefactor and I’m giving you a five year horizon and you have an unlimited fund, you can work with anybody in the world, what would you do?

1:01:10 It could be art, it could be research, but what’s that one project that’s like on the back of your mind that you haven’t been able to do, maybe something that’s more, you know, about Atlantica, I’m sure it’s something very unique to you. Yes, I was offered a billion dollars the other day as a thought. Yeah, me too. Yeah, it’s like kind of worse than enough, but I would like to work with James Cameron and not in the way that you would imagine, I have a vision or an idea where I would like to utilise, this sounds bizarre, out of context, this sounds bizarre, but work with me.

1:01:46 He’s just on a film underwater, right? He’s got another one on the go at the moment in New Zealand, so he’ll be around Down Under for quite a while, but he’s doing extraordinary exploration work as well as creative work, which I admire immensely. Because he fell in love with the capsule during the filming of the Titanic, right? And now he goes very, very low depths in the ocean on his own, right? That’s right.

1:02:14 I’ll let you talk. He’s done some extraordinary work where he has gone to the deepest parts of the Mariana Trench and brought back in an enormous amount of research. Now he’s just donated that beautiful sub to Norway for continuing research, which is tremendous. And he’s got other projects where he’s sort of going into the water. He’s gone down alone, 11,000 meters.

1:02:41 Yes. two attempts but he ran into some troubles with the battery initially so he needed to work on that and then go down and he was successful in that. It was an extraordinary expedition who privately funded tremendously courageous expedition. He produced some amazing technology to enable that to happen and he’s also brought back an enormous amount of material for further research. It was pretty scary. I’d rather go to space on my own than down there. Would you be scared at all to go down there? Of course I would, but I would take on that challenge and not be as daunted as going into space. I think…

1:03:22 I agree with James, I think it’s dark in space. It’s dark down there. It’s dark in space too. It’s dark in space too. You’re watching too many movies maybe.

1:03:31 But yes, my big project, my big vision. Yes, what would you like to do with him? I would like, I have this vision and this idea that, I mean, water has so many computational properties, we can direct, we can start to store information in water. I would like to see that our ocean systems, rather than setting up nodes for telecommunication, rather than using, you know, spending billions and billions of dollars in cloud computing, that we actually use our oceans as our storage for all data and information transfer, and we start to use our oceans as natural architectures.

1:04:08 So technically, this is possible, and I think that’s a beautiful way of merging both our future with our future biology, our future technology, both in the most sophisticated and gorgeous way. Is that because of the salts and stuff in the ocean? Does that help with salts in the ions or chemically, how would that work? Alright, I’m not a physicist, I’m not a chemist, but I have been able to sort of pull together a number of extraordinary kind of little projects and say, okay, if we put this together and this together and this together, much like we did with the Luna Gaia project for NASA, these things are possible.

1:04:55 So we have physicists who are using the computational properties of bubbles and droplets to be able to create simple little computational gates, yes, no, maybe. We have other researchers, only in the last 12 months, who have been able to store an extraordinary amount of data, more than hundreds of computers, into a small molecule. And then, okay, it takes 70 hours, but we can extrapolate that information by decoding it to pull it out. Wow. If we can do that with one molecule, we can do that with a water molecule.

1:05:28 So if we start to combine these types of things, we can also use, we can send frequencies through water in order to be able to change and direct its shape. So we start to combine some of these possibilities and these technologies, and I mean, you know, an artist here, it’s my idea to dream and imagine and say, okay, I can’t, I can’t tell you all of the steps to enable this technology to occur, but I can start to describe as an artist, the type of technicity that we need, the type of thinking that we can take on board to make an extraordinary vision like this possible. It sounds like something Rachel might help with.

1:06:07 Yes, we presented it at a conference with her earlier this week and I’m pitching it again in a kind of different format on the weekend at another architectural conference. What do you think the timeline for something like this with the realm of possibility is it a hundred years, five hundred or? No, well see I’ve just been you know in 2010 I also attended the Singularity University so you know a hundred years is really far out there. I think we’re talking about you know if you have you have a lot of I think the technologies that are required for it will only we’re talking a five to ten year time frame but what what will be the critical element will be the convergence of those types of technologies. So if we’re talking about a a 15 to 20 year time frame.

1:06:53 I think that’s realistic. Wow, this is something that reminds me of Rachel’s talk where she’s talking about these big ideas that are hard to kind of conceive. And I’m completely forgetting Rachel’s surname. It’s Armstrong, right? Yes.

1:07:06 Yeah, sorry, Rachel. But yeah, they’re big ideas. They’re huge. And there’s a lot of freedom in having a huge idea. Yeah.

1:07:14 It’s like, well, clearly the pathway that we imagine for it now is not going to be the pathway. Therefore, we don’t have to be so precious with that. We can come at this kind of problem or this idea from so many different angles and pursue all of them equally. And there’s a great liberty in that. I just like, I like that kind of thinking and it enables me to tackle other projects along the way to kind of build towards what I imagine a big vision would be.

1:07:43 You know, I was listening to Sarah in the beginning and I was just like sitting there listening to her and I’m like, thank God we have people like this in the world that aren’t just doing our nine to five jobs that like think like all these crazy ideas, whether it’s art or research and all this stuff because like it’s inspiring to listen to and like I can’t think of this stuff. Yeah, I mean, I was sitting by this morning, we had a quick phone conversation. I got up early this morning to do a bit of research on you and I was just like, wow, this is really exciting.

1:08:16 I couldn’t even conceive of someone like you until today and now here you are telling us that we could potentially store all our data in the ocean. It’s just unbelievable. Just that idea is yeah. Well think about what it means okay from a performer. If we take that to its natural conclusion imagine this how much of our body is made up of water? And our brain? And our brain? 80%. Okay and how much of our atmosphere is made up of water? Extraordinary amount really. So suddenly you start to think, ah, if we’ve been projecting and imagining, you don’t think it’s outrageous to imagine a future where a virtual life and a real life are that distinct. That’s not outrageous.

1:09:01 We’ve got so much technology around us that we go, oh yeah, that’s a given. But imagine if that virtual and that real technology was actually not part of a carbon-based system, part of a something that interacts more easily with the human body like water or something that a system that naturally exists we’re just tapping into it so in in some ways it’s kind of an ancient gift that we already have on this planet and in another way we’re just bringing our advanced thinking to work with it and in harmony I mean that kind of makes sense to me and that that’s a way where where I can naturally go, ah, well, then I’m not so daunted about this radical future where our biology and our technology completely intermeshed and are almost indistinguishable. I mean, which is the case almost now.

1:09:55 Yeah. Who are your role models? Sorry, your role models growing up? Did you, I mean, because yeah, you have quite a unique thing you’ve done with your career, but who would you look up to? I don’t know.

1:10:08 I think I love circus clowns. I love tennis stars. I had a fetish for Boy George at one stage and you know I was kind of a typical kid. Who didn’t. Who didn’t. You did right.

1:10:23 I liked his voice. I even wore boxing boots just like him. I believe you. But I think The people that, I guess, influenced me most were kind of my own family members and those in my own communities who I saw as fearless or strong or determined or just able to be themselves and I admired that immensely. people listening out there you know maybe it’s a 15 or 20 year old girl or a boy or and they’re like okay how can I grow up and be like Sarah you know you must have come up with a lot of obstacles people must have told you you are insane with some of your artwork and all that stuff and I’m just wondering what kind of advice you give them you know if they want to you know be a TEDfellow one day okay well I think there’s lots of people who’d like to be TEDfellow yes but I don’t know that there’d be so many young students or girls or people who’d say, I want to be an artist researcher diver. I think most people would want to be one of those things, not all of those things. And my advice to them would be to have the courage to explore what you’re passionate about and not be limited by society’s of fitting within a pre-existing mould, that it is okay to ask questions, it’s okay to explore, it’s okay to open yourself to the possibility of new discovery.

1:12:06 And it might be a little alienating, it might be a little challenging at times, but there is an enormous community of people who are very similar and they’re the people that you need to gravitate towards. Find yourself. Find where you’re best supported. Find where you feel most alive in the world and where you thrive. And that is exactly where you’re meant to be.

1:12:34 Do you think people should be prepared to feel uncomfortable and be prepared to be told that they’re a little crazy and get used to that kind of feeling because then maybe they’re on the right path? I think the only people that say that’s a little bit crazy are the kinds of people who are a little bit frightened that I might actually be doing something worthwhile. I don’t think it’s said arbitrarily, I don’t think it’s said off the cuff, it’s usually from people who kind of go, gosh, that’s quite difficult to handle because that kind of has some basis, and that’s the point at which it is uncomfortable for them.

1:13:14 Them. But I haven’t been called crazy for a long time. Extraordinary, maybe. What do they say? Poor people are crazy, rich people are eccentric. Yes, but I don’t get called ordinary. And I completely embrace the fact that all of the ordinary things that most people take for granted I find really difficult. And I don’t have that enormous skill set to do all of those things. What is kind of easier for me to grasp are all of these things that other people find extraordinary. And that’s kind of my safe zone. So I have a great deal of respect for people from all different walks of life and the way that they manage their worlds and their lives. What’s an ordinary thing that you’re not good at? Well, you You know, I don’t have a home, so like simple things like, you know, things that people take for granted, surely this is all in order, I don’t have that in order, I’ve sacrificed or I haven’t given attention to these kinds of things in order to be able to do the other kind of work or to be able to live and work and breathe my work, not just write about it.

1:14:28 And that’s been really critical. You know, if I’m going to propose an idea, then I’m going to have to create that idea, I’m going to have to test that idea, I’m going to have to live with that idea. Otherwise, it’s not fair to ask that of anyone else to sort of step into that unless I’m prepared to do that myself. To totally immerse in everything. Absolutely.

1:14:49 Do you know who Jack White is? He’s part of the White Stripes, do you know that band? It’s kind of like, I guess they have their basis in blues and rock and he’s quite a very creative, eccentric musician and there was like an interview with him and he talked about how he would create music and he’d put the piano, he plays a bunch of instruments at the same time and he put the piano like a half a step away too far and he’d play an instrument with two strings instead of four and he put all these challenges to him when he would make his music and he’d find a way to do it or he’d find something new about the music when he did do it. And when Sarah was describing her sphere experiment or sphere live art, it felt like the same thing. Like it feels like you’re just trying to put yourself in these weird, strange new environments and find out what happens almost for the sake of it or the sake of learning. Not always, not always, but I can see where you’re coming from. I think I like some of the Harry Houdini sort of projects where he says, you know, the bind is, if you’re a escape artist, you’ve got to be confined first.

1:15:58 And I think, you know, I have this natural tendency to want to explore and to go beyond myself, and I kind of run into this challenge where it’s like, okay, well, I have to set up the parameter in order to go beyond it. And I find this over and over and over. I do create a challenge in which I need to surpass those limits somehow. And sometimes that’s just, theoretically, with a question. I’ve said this and not an extraordinary question for myself. Oh my goodness and I have to go to the end of the earth to be able to answer it. But it can be also this physical manifestation as well. I really would like to explore the depths of the ocean. I really would like to go to the Mariana Trench and I really would like to be able to look at how that impacts the human psyche and the human behaviours and limits and to be able to talk about that because I think increasingly whether it’s myself, whether it’s my grandchildren, whether it’s us as an entire species, we’re going to be moving further and further towards more increasingly extreme environments, more alien environments and life, whether it’s actual or virtual, is going to be this phenomena that is beyond unknown limits, beyond our known experiences. So how can we begin to embrace that now? How do we even talk about that now?

1:17:24 How do we visualise that? One of the things that I’ve been dying to ask you is how do you run your day? Because you’ve got this research side of you that must be kind of process left brain driven and then you’ve got the artistic side which is right brain. I’m a list guy, I make a list, I get up in the morning, I’m like, okay, I’ve got to knock those ten things off the list, I’m done. If I can get seven or eight, five, five, I’m with you. So, I mean, you do lists, but then you also, but how does that not start for your creativity? Does that not kind of put you into a boundary? I have little, okay, I have a list system, so it’s not just the list I have for these kind of chunking methods where, you know, this is particularly that type of activity, this is this type of activity. So I might be doing a lot of admin, but I might be doing a lot of research work, I might be doing a lot of creative work, but they’re kind of chunked together in groups. And then I give myself the freedom to go with that, which I’m feeling. So if I wake up at 3am and I’m just inspired, then that’s when I tick off all of those aspects of that particular list and I’m really grateful that I can do that.

1:18:42 And if I, in the afternoon, if I’ve run out of energy and I’m low in blood sugar or something like that, I would just do all of the menial things that are on that list. All of the things that don’t require any type of passionate input, it’s just a matter of just doing it, going through the motions etc etc and that is the same performatively as well, it’s the same whether I’m going for a run, whether I’m exploring something choreographically, whether I’m building something, whether I’m in a studio space or not and it will depend on the location. If I’m in a hotel room or if I’m in a crew house diving, I don’t have access to a traditional type of studio space where I can make things. But I kind of chunk blocks of time per year where for three months I’m going to be working with this particular lab or for three months I’m going to be working in this pristine remote environment. And I know I have to let everything else go. All of the expectations of being able to Skype three times a day, I have to let that go. I’m going to be hard-pressed to get telephone coverage in that area. And I just make a commitment to trust that, okay, the things that are important will happen.

1:20:00 If I need to change my life to make that happen, I will do that. And I have that flexibility. Without the kind of anchors that I talked about that most people have, I can develop a nomadic, portable practice and step into these arenas and just sort of give it everything when I’m there, then I step out of it and I go into a different space. So I have these little rituals to make sure that, like a turtle, like my little dome on my back, like I have these little rituals so that I feel like I have a home with me wherever I go. And a little practice so I can wake up in any space and feel comfortable, do my thing and just be centered and focused.

1:20:45 I need like a documentary or a reality show. It’d be nice to see like a month in your life. And what it is that you do for fun? Don’t say dive. What is it you do for fun?

1:20:59 I would probably dance. Just completely let go. On your own, in a club, people. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.

1:21:08 And I’m probably going to finish up here with one of… It’s a classic London Real question, but if you can make a phone call to the 20-year-old Sarah and give her a bit of advice and it can’t be keep going girl. Give her a little bit of advice What would it be? Um, I think it would be Probably at that time in my life. It would have been really important to just say Don’t ever let anyone’s gender bias get in the way of the decisions that you make I think I’ve confronted that an awful lot in the type of work and environments that I’ve stretched into, not so much in the arts but certainly in other male dominated industries.

1:22:04 Diving or research? Diving and space research, working with engineers, working with technologists, working particularly in the physical aspects of commercial diving and cruise. So I think some of my decisions were based on that kind of politeness in those environments and I’m happy to continue to be polite but I don’t think I need to hesitate and I think that’s important. I’m sure you’re not polite when the time is right. I’m always polite but I just become stern.

1:22:44 Just like Karl Stromberg in 007. All right. Well, we’re just clear again. I’m going to stick with that analogy, but a female version, awesome. Anyways, Sarah, how do people get ahold of you?

1:22:54 How do they find out what you’re doing? You got a pretty awesome website, I must say. Thank you. But yeah, how do they find you? SarahJanePel.com.

1:23:03 They can follow me on Twitter, which is aquabatics. I also have Sarah Jane Pell as a Twitter feed as well. There’s also the Sarah Jane Pell blog site, too. Is that on your website or accessible via your website? Yes, both.

1:23:21 Yeah. So Sarah Jane Pell is a great repository. There’s links to absolutely everything if you’d like to connect. And send me an email if you’d like to collaborate, do something extraordinary. I love adventures.

1:23:34 James Cameron, if you’re listening, which you know, he might see this. He might. I might send it to him, especially. Why not? a fantastic website. It’s just got all of your videos and I mean I stare at your website for like hours trying to figure out who the hell is this? Who is this? Because you’ve got all this art, you’ve got your videos, you’ve got your TED talks and you’ve got like all this, you’ve got the Atlantica, all these projects. So is it too much? It’s a little bit intimidating. Really? You’re just, there’s just so much to you. It’s, it’s hard to digest.

1:24:04 Okay. So should it be more cohesive? You’re much more personable than I thought you The videos work well because the video and your TED talk and stuff then I could immediately after now on the website I was like, okay, video done. Do you think it’s off-putting? No.

1:24:19 No. It’s great. It’s great. Maybe us men just find her intimidating because she’s so accomplished. I don’t know.

1:24:26 I didn’t even ask you, what are you doing in London and how long are you here for? Well, I came for an extraordinary conference called Future Cities which was organized by by Rachel Armstrong, actually, and that was with a great group from the Avatar Group at the University of Greenwich, and it was looking at a project that they’re doing, which is part of the 100 Year Starship project, which is great, so it’s really futurist thinking, and that was fantastic. I’m also here to speak at the Smart Geometry Conference, which is at the Bartlett on the weekend, which is again another, I’m giving you a keynote at the symposium, which is looking at uncertain futures and how we designed for uncertain futures.

1:25:06 So that will be kind of an amazing event. Next week, I’m flying to Paris and I’m really excited. I’m premiering a new interactive water project at CHI Interactivity, which is the Computer Human Interaction Conference. It’s like the penultimate. And we’ve got an interactive installation of some new underwater technologies I’ve created, these little creatures, if you like, with little beautiful tentacles.

1:25:34 And they mimic human motion underwater, this interaction between the water and the body. And they kind of dance with you. So I have, in one tank, I’m calling them exploration fish. And this is a homage to Frank White, who’s a philosopher, who talks about the overview effect that astronauts experience in space. And he says, you know, we as a species, we’re like exploration fish, and we’re going to move from terra firma earth out into Solaris and beyond.

1:26:06 And so I’ve created these little exploration fish, and they look like sea anemones with beautiful little tentacles. And inside them they have a multi-axis kind of robot that is being fed this motion data, And they light up these beautiful colours and they move like a little school of fish. They all move together. They move together. There’s some video of this on your website.

1:26:33 So you interact with mother fish and then the baby fish, these little exploration fish kind of dance over there. And we’ve perfected it since that video. We’ve been tweaking it, tweaking it, tweaking it so that it does some really cool things to showcase at this venue. So while I’m only demonstrating the basic technology, my dream is to perform next year with them underwater with motion sensors all over my body and have an entire school of fish or exploration of fish dancing and illuminated with me underwater.

1:27:07 That’s crazy. That’s cool. You’re going to do this in France? I’m going to do it in Australia and possibly in France as well. And we have, you know, like we haven’t even lived under the water for very long.

1:27:18 Only 69 days, well we don’t have any motion, movement motion tracking of the human body underwater. Really? We don’t. So we have two access motion capture of the swimmers and people in shallow water. We have nothing of the diver’s body or nothing of the freediver’s body or nothing of their aquabat body.

1:27:37 So I’m working with a group at the Exertion Games Lab at RMIT University in Melbourne Australia and we’re going to develop this technology and look at the choreographic potentials for that too. It’s really exciting. It’s very cool. Wow. My brain is full. Sarah-Jane Pell, thank you so much for coming. You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

1:27:58 It’s just amazing. Much more than I expected. You’re much cooler than I thought you would be. Way, way cooler. Yeah. And you’re ten times better than a Bond girl so who you can. If you’re listening to us on iTunes, please subscribe if you want to see our faces and see what everyone looks like please come to our YouTube channel which is London Real TV and yeah follow Sarah on Twitter we’re on Twitter too we’re on Facebook we’re gonna be taking a picture right after this that we’ll put up on on Facebook and Twitter so come check us out thank you so much thank you yeah I didn’t even get to learn about you guys I feel so selfish but if you come back and do that performance in France next year we might come and shoot it or something that sounds incredible so anyways best of luck with you and everything here and yeah it doesn’t sound like there’s no flies on her as we say in the States not at all no sorry thank you so much didn’t talk about the snorke so the dewlery breather but yeah I think we’ve got some interesting stuff we’d save for next time all right well as we say London Real until then it’s about the journey thank you thank you so much thank you and then there was very rapidly so that was my first case which came out of the S.A.S.