The PPE of Sentience: AI as an Environmental Witness in Human Aquatic and Extra-Terrestrial Occupations

Politics of the Machine Conference, The Institute of Advanced Studies, The University Of Western Australia, Perth, Australia, July 16-18, 2025

Sarah Jane Pell

Abstract | Paper 97 (accepted)

This paper investigates AI’s role as an environmental witness in two extreme and fluid landscapes: the abyssal depths of the ocean and the vast frontiers of space. It explores how AI, when embedded within aquatic and extraterrestrial environments, mediates our landscape perception, translating material realities into digital sensory experiences that exceed human perceptual limits as a form of decoherence PPE (personal protective equipment). Historically, ocean and space exploration have relied on human presence to validate and interpret new frontiers. Yet, with the rise of AI-driven remote sensing technologies, autonomous probes, and machine-learning models capable of recognising patterns beyond human cognition, the epistemology of witnessing is fundamentally shifting. How does AI’s ability to analyse multi-spectral, multi-scalar data reconstruct our relationship to landscapes where human presence is limited or impossible? And how does this challenge the authenticity of direct human experience as the gold standard for environmental witnessing? Building upon earlier Aquabatics philosophies and the 2022 BTS diver twin findings, this paper examines how AI, MML, and XR technologies are shattering long-held views of the human capacity for sensing environmental sentience while increasing the risk of detachment from it. The BTS diver twin case study illustrates how diver cognition, perception, and eco-entanglement diverge under mediated, AI-augmented conditions, raising critical questions about the erasure of embodied experience and the living agency of self through nonhuman proxies. .

Key Words: more-than-human ecologies, artificial intelligence, overview effect, aquabatics, taxonomies

Sarah Jane Pell, 2025. The PPE of Sentience: AI as an Environmental Witness in Human Aquatic and Extra-Terrestrial Occupations. In Proceedings of the 5th Politics of the Machines Conference (POM '25) Synthetic Sentience. The Institute of Advanced Studies, The University Of Western Australia, Perth, Australia (Jul 2025), 9 pages.

Beyond the Human Zeno Frame: Deep Art, Play States and the Sentience of Extremes

Politics of the Machine Conference, The Institute of Advanced Studies, The University Of Western Australia, Perth, Australia, July 16-18, 2025

Sarah Jane Pell

Abstract | Paper 98 (accepted)

This playful presentation invokes an interdisciplinary dialogue between artistic research, psycho-quantum mechanics, and poly-valued logic to redefine sentience beyond the zeno effect of human-centric ontologies festering with AI/LLMs. It examines how environments of extreme physical and conceptual uncertainty—such as deep-sea exploration and interstellar travel—offer fertile ground for rethinking the very nature of consciousness, agency, and being simultaneously. Building on contemporary research in quantum cognition and neuroaesthetics, this study investigates how artists still crave truly altered states of awareness, induced by the weightlessness of space or the immersive pressure of deep water, to generate new epistemological frameworks for understanding sentience. It argues that just as quantum mechanics destabilises classical dualities, so too must we reconceptualise sentience as a spectrum of interacting probabilities, rather than as a fixed attribute assigned to discrete entities. Through speculative artistic interventions, this work considers the implications of hybrid sentience, where biological, mechanical, and computational agencies merge. It entangles the contemporary research-art works of DePaulis, Pell, Nahum, Woods, Vermeulen, and Saracano to take you down and then get you high. Can sentience be conceived as an emergent field of relations, rather than a property of individual entities? How might we navigate new ethics of co-existence with synthetic and post-biological life forms? By extending the discussion of sentience into the transmaterial domain, this submission invites a radical rethinking of cognition, perception, and interaction within the evolving technosphere of exploration domains.

Key Words: quantum cognition, neuroaesthetics, altered states, weightlessness, deep-sea exploration, interstellar travel, hybrid sentience, transmaterial agency, speculative art, post-biological intelligence, ethics of coexistence, probability-based consciousness

Sarah Jane Pell, 2025. Beyond the Human Zeno Frame: Deep Art, Play States and the Sentience of Extremes. In Proceedings of the 5th Politics of the Machines Conference (POM '25) Synthetic Sentience. The Institute of Advanced Studies, The University Of Western Australia, Perth, Australia (Jul 2025), 11 pages.

Provoking Chaos by Magic Monotones—The Orbit of AI, Synthetic Sentience, and the Aesthetics of Alignment in Space Art

Politics of the Machine Conference, The Institute of Advanced Studies, The University Of Western Australia, Perth, Australia, July 16-18, 2025

Sarah Jane Pell

Abstract | Paper 99 (accepted)

This paper interrogates the paradoxes of AI alignment in space art through the metaphor of “Provoking Chaos by Magic Monotones”—an expression that evokes the tension between imposed order and the generative unpredictability of synthetic systems. The phrase in the context of RoM on space art reflects how AI, constrained by regulatory frameworks and reinforcement models, is simultaneously tasked with engaging the radical uncertainty of non-terrestrial environments. It asks: What is lost when we force synthetic sentience into legible, structured outputs? And conversely, what forms of emergent intelligence arise when AI resists these constraints, generating its logic beyond human comprehension? Is this the orbital perspective or the overview effect that Astronauts speak of? Drawing from three demonstrator projects by Bending Horizons, this paper explores AI’s shifting role from a tool of interpretation to an autonomous agent negotiating the fluid thresholds of control and creativity. Furthermore, these projects serve to become their black holes: a disruptive force capable of generating new epistemologies, challenging anthropocentric biases, and unsettling the very notion of alignment as an ethical or aesthetic necessity. Can such monotone magicality thrust as our salvation amidst this chaos, reveal itself merely as wanton human-level quantum expectation and desire for alien revelation?

Key Words: Space Art, Epistemology of AI, Cosmic Aesthetics, Extended Realities, Chaos & Emergence, Magic

Sarah Jane Pell, 2025. Provoking Chaos by Magic Monotones—The Orbit of AI, Synthetic Sentience, and the Aesthetics of Alignment in Space Art. In Proceedings of the 5th Politics of the Machines Conference (POM '25) Synthetic Sentience. The Institute of Advanced Studies, The University Of Western Australia, Perth, Australia (Jul 2025), 13 pages.

The 5th edition of the POM-conference will explore the evolving politics of sentience across a wide array of fields, including, but not limited to, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, cultural studies, creative arts, philosophy, bioart, music, psychology, food, and the intersection of art & science. The central theme of the conference revolves around understanding and navigating the political, ethical, technological, artistic, and cultural transformations brought about by the rise of sentient and proto-sentient entities—from AI and autonomous machines to brain organoids and synthetic life forms.

https://www.pomconference.org/pom-perth-2025/

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