Sep 9, 2026
Getting to space is an engineering problem. Living there is a design problem.
In Episode 4 of Dances with Robots, host Ariane Michaud sets the rocketry aside and asks what an ordinary day off Earth might look like. Her guides are space architect Brent Sherwood and space journalist Maria Varmazis, who chart an industry in transition: from astronauts on research missions to paying tourists, and eventually to people who intend to stay.
The conversation ranges from space hotels and microgravity spas (and yes, sex in zero G) to cooking, movement, beauty, and art. Underneath all of it is a harder question: how will we move, gather, create, and find meaning in places unlike anything we've known? Sherwood and Varmazis make the case that answering it takes more than engineers, and that artists, designers, and other students of how people actually live need a seat at the table now.
This episode of Dances with Robots is supported by The Brown Arts Institute at Brown University and is co-produced by Consciously Produced.
Visit are.na/choreographicinterfaces for this episode's show notes.