Sarah Jane Pell

Artist, Brainstormer, Change Agent, Designer, Entrepreneur, Explorer, Idea generator, Job-seeker, Performer, World traveler

Sarah Jane Pell is a multi-award-winning artist with an experimental practice spanning 20 years. The “Artist Astronaut” began civilian spaceflight training in 2016 with the support of a two-year Australia Council Fellowship to investigate new modes of ‘Performing Astronautics’. She earned a Doctor of Philosophy at Edith Cowan University in Australia and has collaborated with NASA, ESA, JAXA and the private sector on numerous space missions and strategic sci-art interests. Her work has been exhibited and performed worldwide. She is a commercial diver with extensive experience in remote isolated confined environment (ICE), black water operations and sea survival. Founder/director of the Aquabatics Research Team initiative ARTi 2002-2012, her work on Human Performance Underwater (Aquabatics) was awarded the MIT Leonardo LABS Best PhD Art & Science in 2007. Pell joined Monash University as Adj. Associate Professor (Research), in the Faculty of Engineering, Engineering Office of the Dean, and Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture in Aug 2018. Pell’s research focuses on human expression and performance. She designs tactical laboratories for experimental arts to support performance within operational ICE environments for application in sea and space domains. She collaborates with the Monash Immersive Visualisation Platform [MIVP]. Her team have produced tools for spatial awareness during simulated spacewalks known as EVAs in terrestrial analogue sites including the high altitudes of the Himalaya's Mustang region and the US Utah desert, and post-processing large data transmission between global sites for affective visualisation in the CAVE2, Virtual Reality, Dome and Future Control Room. Artefacts include immersive media, mixed reality, human-robotic interaction design, and new systems for live art and translocation communication and interdisciplinary human performance research. Outcomes are real and speculative, poetic and practical with high technical cultural value and human factors benefits. Pell is currently an Associate Professor at Monash University in Human-Centered Computing and Creativity, and Vice-Chair of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) Technical Committee for the Cultural Utilisation of Space [ITCCUS] 2018-2021. Sarah Jane has danced with underwater rovers, flown space art payloads, designed rebreathers and helmets, and broadcast Earth-Moon-Earth performances. Prestigious awards include Australia Council Fellow. Australia Council Arts Leader. Gifted Citizen – Hon. Mention. She is a 2010 TED Fellow.

Human expression, art, design, human performance, human spaceflight, commercial diving, advanced life support, imagined worlds, human factors, extreme environments, poetics and aesthetic practice.

Can you imagine seeking to embody the culture of exploration and redefine our visions of future worlds from sea, to summit, to space? It is my mission to perform expressively and builds novel prototype apparatus to test and communicate the human experience of exploration directly from the field. Artefacts may include sculptural, technical, poetic and media events. In this way, an arts practice promotes physical conditioning, creative visualisation and communication, and contributes new understandings of the worlds we inhabit, and the worlds we hope to create and protect.

Art and Science Collaboration, Astronaut Candidate, Climbing Everest, Commercial Diving, Human Spaceflight, Installation Art, Live Performance, Lunar Habitats, Movement and the Lived Body of Phenomenology, New Media, SCUBA diver, Simulation Astronaut, Spacesuits, Underwater Performance

TED2010 Fellow, Speaker (TEDxMelbourne 2016, TEDxMelbourne 2015, TEDxRockhampton 2013, TEDxISU 2013, TEDxSydney 2010), Attendee (TED 2020 (Virtual), TED Summit 2019, TEDxSydney 2015, TEDxMelbourne 2010, TEDWomen 2010, TED2010), and TEDFellows Retreat (2015, 2013).

Choosing apples, oil painting, rock climbing and extreme ideas.