New technologies for extreme performance and art in space

Art in Space and Technologies Workshop

Janet Biggs, Sarah Jane Pell

"Both technology and art define and continue to reshape the world we live in. Re-imagining what we know as real or as a solid ground, pushes not only our opinions and understandings of nature to the limits, but with new inventions and experiments, both the mind and the body, the language, and the world itself seems to be making room for a different sphere and fresh rules. Governed by the new aesthetics, the virtual, the scientific and the logic that is beyond belief, technology in art challenges our perceptions and that is what creativity and science are all about... Examining the artist’s role in the society, Stephen Wilson considers the idea that the creative figure must be an active partner in determining the direction of research and pushes for the final fusion of science and technology as a vital tool for the understanding of the world."

- The Serious Relationship of Art and Technology, Widewalls Editorial 25 July, 2017.

Artists/Analogue Astronauts Janet Biggs (US) and Sarah Jane Pell (AU) Global Hands On Universe Conference, Tribhuvan University, Prithivi Narayan Campus, Nepal 7-9 Mar 2019.

Pell & Biggs gave a presentation about their respective creative practices undertaken in extreme places from active volcanic to alpine regions, and informed by unlikely activities including commercial diving and aerobatic horse-riding. For the practical workshop, Pell & Biggs shared the strategies and technologies that they take in the field: such as the Rokoko motion-capture suit and virtual reality camera on loan from the Monash Immersive Visualisation Platform for the purpose of expeditionary-art research. The recorded participatory movement-based exchange aimed to bring Nepali culture into a Mars analogue dataset, and inspire an open free-form discussion.

Professor Bonnie Thurber, SOC/LOC members, Nationals and International guests at the Global Hands-On Universe Conference, Tribhuvan University, Prithivi Narayan Campus, Nepal 7-9 Mar 2019. All images courtesy of the Pokhora Astronomical Society

Founded in 1959, Tribhuvan University is the oldest University in Nepal and the 10th-largest university in the world by enrollment (604,437). The Tribhuvan University Institute of Science and Technology is based at the Prithivi Narayan Campus. Global Hands-On Universe (GHOU) is a worldwide educational program that enables students to investigate the Universe through astronomy while applying tools and concepts from science, math, and technology. Dr. Bonnie Thurber (CEO of Educational Continuum Org-ECO, and President of Global Hans-on Universe) coordinated GHOU’s First Asia Regional Conference with the support of the Pokhora Astronomical Society. We participate as part of an international delegation supporting the Mars Academy USA education program and acclimatising on-route to the MAU-Nepal 001 Mars Medical Analogue Mission Simulation reconnoitre in the Lower Mustang Kingdom.

⇐ View MAU-Nepal 001 Analogue Overview ⇐ Back to Conferences