(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, artists experience what it might be like to live on the moon.

(Trent) There's always challenges when people go on an analog mission, so what we're trying to do is simulate what it would be like to be on the lunar surface.

(Tom) U of A scientists are reinventing plastics It's from an unlikely substance.

(jeffrey) For us, it's very much about being aware of what needs to be discovered and then having an idea to try it.

(Tom) We'll take you to a fresh water spring with good vibes.

(Man) There's people who come and they bless the water, do their own little rituals.

There's people who come and they fill up 200 five gallons, you know, an entire day and go back to Phoenix and sell it all.

(Tom) And we'll check in on the restoration of the Teatro Carmen.

(Herb) What's so iconic about this project is that it has Hispanic heritage, African American heritage, and Chinese heritage all within the same block.

That sort of makes this project really special.

(Tom) Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

Have you ever imagined living in space?

Well, recently the Space Analog for the Moon and Mars at Biosphere 2 invited four artists for a six-day simulated mission where they perform their art wearing spacesuits.

And it gave us a different way of looking at a mission that's typically designed for scientists.

♪ TWINKLY PERCUSSION (Christopher) We are trying to become, in thought, lunar beings.

Exploration, at its finest, is not about imposing will, but about learning humility.

The moon is lifeless, but once we're there, we're the life that's on the moon.

So how we treat it is also a way of thinking about how we treat ourselves and each other.

[ AIR HISSING ] But how we go there and how we talk about it really does matter.

Description implies ethics.

To the extent that we use language, like colonizing, like frontier, like resources, that suggests a certain moral relationship to the moon.

(Ellen) We are aesthetic animals.

Art is integrated into who we are and what we are.

My goal as Associate Dean for Research in the Arts is to raise awareness and to integrate arts research into the larger R1 research enterprise.

When we send artists into the simulated space mission, how are they seeing it differently?

You say, "this is a space that was designed by scientists with science in mind to make science," and then you bring artists in.

What happens?

After the conversation, this is a good idea, then, it gets a little harder.

We get the funding.

We have the competition to select folks to be on the mission.

(Julie) When we think about the night sky and when we think about the moon, it's been part of who we are forever.

I'll be the poet working on this crew.

I write a lot about place and sensory experiences or the way that we get to know a place and connect to it.

There's a sense of smallness and humility that comes from looking at the night sky.

That's something we've really lost in our contemporary society.

How would you do this if you were going to space?

I'm going to be the textile designer or the textile artist.

I decided to use everything that I've learned as a costumer and create tapestries/quilts.

(Elizabeth) I feel like a lot of my focus is kind of on the EVA, the Extra Vehicular Activity.

I leave the habitat and put on the spacesuit and experiment with movement.

(Ellen) It's so important for us to think about what we know and how we know it and how we create knowledge.

A neurolinguist from Berkeley has said that the consensus among people who study the mind is that 98% of our cognition happens outside of our conscious awareness.

Arts research is our processes that work with, speak to, and activate this massive amount of our cognition.

There's always challenges when people go on an analog mission.

So what we're trying to do is simulate what it would be like to be on the lunar surface.

(Julie) When we're thinking about the moon, where we can't have any direct interactions with it, we're always going to have the mediation of a spacesuit or a habitat.

We won't be able to smell it or touch it.

(Elizabeth) Dancers are so connected to the surface of the floor.

The shoe that you wear is put on in a really intentional way, like moving through the floor and articulating the feet, and, so, the boots- that's a challenge that I'm looking forward to moving through.

We're looking at technology, we're looking at operations.

Every crew has a different mission that they propose.

One of the key things you need for your planetary explanation is communication.

The technology we are trying to test is mesh network.

You don't rely on any already existing infrastructure.

Once you are placing all the device you are bringing with you around, they will start communicating.

The data we are seeing behind us are at the moment being collected by a set of sensors which are communicating via mesh network.

(Kai) Even NASA doesn't have a pressurized analog operating today.

Because our analog is hermetically sealed and pressurized, they are constantly monitoring the pressure and they're also monitoring the quality of their air.

Inside of SAM, they're aware of every breath they take, every drop of water they drink.

This crew in particular will be the first time that they're recycling the moisture in the air.

Then running that water through a high quality activated carbon filter, and they're putting that water back into the drinking supply.

Then dehydrate their food, grind it up with the NutriBullet, and then they feed it to mycelia, which is the root structure of mushrooms.

Then they'll be to eat the mushrooms.

It's a zero waste facility.

There are no garbage cans inside.

We were really careful about the toilet paper.

We were careful about everything.

We really wanted to be good.

We also were able to recycle some of the water.

(Christopher) We drank our own breath.

(Julie) Yeah, it was good.

Yeah.

-All right, ready to go?

(Elizabeth) The 1.6 gravity zone felt completely new.

Telling the students to kind of experiment, take risks, be vulnerable in terms of their dance and their choreography.

(Ivy) I wasn't anticipating how hard it was going to be to sew.

With my hands being restricted, I couldn't hold things very well.

Maybe that could be improved for another mission.

(Elizabeth) As a dancer, you spend a lifetime trying to move in a really articulate way.

Being in the 1.6 gravity zone felt completely new.

(Trent) Astronauts can actually come in after their spacewalk with hand trauma.

You can lose fingernails just from the work that you're doing in space because the suits are so difficult to move in.

(Elizabeth) In some movements, the amount of energy that it took for me to move in the spacesuit was more.

And sustaining movement for a long period of time, I felt out of breath.

(Ivy) To be able to allow the person to have better movement and a little less stiffness.

That's why me and Trent are creating pressure suits that might you know help with that challenge.

(Christopher) What kinds of things astronauts should be expected to know and do?

We can ask them to think creatively and to maybe try to do art.

Can we ask them that?

I mean, I want to because I think it's important.

But they have so much work to do.

(Julie) Trying to imagine a way that an artist could be part of a crew.

Because then if you had someone that that was their specialty, it's maybe a big ask, but it's a way to say communicating this through art is valuable enough.

Usually for me it's a question of what does this mean?

Who am I as an individual?

Who are we as a community?

Who are we as a species?

What does it mean to be human?

♪ UPLIFTING SYNTH [Music] (Tom) Over the last few years, a team at the University of Arizona Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has developed an advanced plastic made of sulfur.

Now, that's a notoriously useless byproduct from the fossil fuel industry.

And this advanced plastic has been developed into state-of-the-art infrared and night vision glasses, longer-lasting batteries for electric vehicles, tires, and even vinyl records.

♪ PEACEFUL ORCHESTRA MUSIC (Jeffrey) We go through about 20 million barrels of oil a day Every single drop of oil has about one to five to even more, sometimes 48% percent of sulfur in that particular crude oil.

It's made in such large amounts and has so few uses it is literally the price of coal Okay, it's dirt cheap.

What are you going to do with all of that unused sulfur?

If you think about all the things that we do with the other chemicals that come from oral finding, that's the world around us.

Asphalt, plastics, right?

Other kinds of chemicals and that type of development and chemical portfolio has never been done with sulfur.

And so our group is really one of the first to think about ways of converting that, and directly making that into a plastic A structure, acrylate, or whether we can with other kinds of nucleophiles.

My name is Jeff Pyun.

I am a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Arizona.

And I also hold a joint appointment in the Wyant College of Optical Sciences.

That's enough for them to mess around with.

The first version of sulfur we work with is in a form of sulfur called an S8 ring, it doesn't dissolve in anything.

It doesn't like anything.

It's literally brimstone.

Okay, the devil's rock.

So what we sort of realize is that when you work with sulfur and you heat it up, it has this kind of chemistry that it can do it can basically break this S8 ring and it can start to react, right?

Either with itself or with other kinds of chemicals, if you can get the chemistry right to mix things that will both be soluble in that phase and also do the right chemistry.

So, that's chemistry that we call polymer chemistry, specifically polymerization, right?

So we developed a new polymerization process.

and when people saw the molded objects we could make, they're like, "Wow, right?

This is actually something that could really lead us to a world one day with sulfur plastics, a reality."

So the very first thing that we did actually is for a battery.

If you can imagine that, So most plastics you can't put into a lithium battery.

But this one, because the bonds are made of sulfurs, right?

You can do a special kind of chemistry known as electrochemistry.

Put some electrical juice with some ions and now you can basically break sulfur-sulfur bonds and put two lithiums right where the sulfur bonds work.

So that was a special next generation battery known as a lithium sulfur battery.

It's got a capacity that's five times higher than a lithium ion battery.

One of the things we did is we made the first sulfur-based polyurethane, so kind of like an elastomer And also another kind of smaller scale application of sulfur, which is very, very small scale, but very useful is your tires.

So we also work with Goodyear and other rubber companies to see if our particular sulfur kinds of plastics could be used to basically make better rubber cross-link tires.

You're always limited by your starting materials and what you start with.

And so the biggest problem with sulfur is colored, right, versus organic molecules tend to be colorless or limited in color white.

So as we now work with these kind of very unusual starting materials, our polymers also have color with them.

Certain types of lenses and cameras have really color kind of very specific demands, and so they have to be perfectly colorless, totally clear, perfectly transparent.

But as we now go to other wavelengths, like for night vision, we're totally out of the visible and now color doesn't mean anything.

That's kind of the first opportunity of some Wow, this would be really a first time ever that we could aim to develop low cost, right?

Transparent, processable infrared plastic lenses.

So we're just very lucky that right down the street from us, we have one of the best colleges in the world for optical sciences and photonics.

And that's kind of where talking to my old friend and colleague, Bob Norwood, to help us understand what these could be used for.

(Robert) So Jeff and I came here almost within a month of each other 20 years ago, and he came into this office one day and he showed this material, which was orange.

And there's a thing about the things you have in a camera and your eyeglasses that you don't generally like them to be orange.

This is kind of a problem.

I mean, unless it's like 1968 or 1969 your at Woodstock.

But I said, you know, this is interesting.

What are these made of?

And he told me, he said Oh, well, these might be pretty good for what's called infrared optics.

That area of optics has been exclusively the domain of very expensive, fragile, scarce materials.

So the idea of a plastic that worked there or polymer work there is quite revolutionary.

I've been thinking for a while of starting a new company but this could be the basis of a new company.

(Jeffrey) We've got great support from our technology transfer office here at the U of A, Tech Launch Arizona.

And so we can do things that normally people like myself can't do.

You know, I'm a professor.

It's not really an obvious thing for me to know how to approach companies or file patents or do all of those things that are required to make a technology real.

(Robert) My career has benefited from a number of different collaborations with very good chemists like Jeff.

And this is my best collaboration for sure.

Best and longest.

(Jeffery) You know, through a lot of angst and effort and misery and creativity, and you know, we found something.

That's the really best part about chemistry is that there's just arguing infinite combinations of things to explore.

The analogy I like to think of is what I call the edge.

As you're a researcher, as you're an explorer, you have to confront the edge.

And for us, it's very much about being aware of what needs to be discovered, and then having an idea to try it.

This drive, right, to make something, right, make something real.

Can I, with my team, do groundbreaking science?

That's-that's the edge.

I think my dream is that the world will have sulfur-based plastics, and that I've had a role to play in that.

(Tom) Harding Spring is a source of fresh drinking water straight from the earth.

The spring is located between Flagstaff and Sedona in Oak Creek Canyon.

People come from as far away as three hours to collect this water.

Next, we see this spring and find out why it's such a vibrant gathering place.

[ EMERGING ENGINE ] [ FLOWING SPRING WATER ] (Speaker 1) Nikola Tesla says if you want to understand the secrets of the universe think in terms of energy, vibrations and frequency.

Which means, the people that come here resonate on a certain frequency or vibrate on a certain frequency, because it does attract a community of people.

It's not just me that's coming three hours away.

There's other people that do that as well and it's for a reason.

They really care about the water they drink.

(Speaker 2) My mom moved out here when I was a little girl and I learned about it from her.

We used to come up here and go camping and fill water.

(Speaker 3) There's nothing more important than water and that's kind of the basis of our life, our being, right?

So there's nothing that we can communicate or commune over more than fresh, clean water.

(Speaker 1) I found an app where you can search for natural springs near you and it showed Harding Springs.

I was like, you can just come here and fill up with spring water.

So that's how I found out about it.

(Speaker 3) I did see one of the service rangers here and they said that they tested pretty often that it tests really, really well for mineral content.

So not too high, not too low, just kind of right in the pocket.

(Speaker 2) Every time you come here you meet people, you talk to them, and everybody has interesting stories.

[ FLOWING SPRING WATER ] (Speaker 3) There's people who come and they bless the water and do their own little rituals.

There's people who come and they fill up 205 gallons an entire day and go back to Phoenix and sell it all.

[ FLOWING SPRING WATER ] (Speaker 1) The world that we see is a mirror reflection of inside as within, so without, as above, so below.

So I feel like things like this getting back to clean source water that will naturally elevate our vibrations and cause us to go from the root chakra to the crown.

But as we rise, so too will the world in conjunction with our vibration.

[ FLOWING SPRING WATER ] [ DISTANT WATER TRICKLING ] (Tom) Nestled in the heart of Tucson's oldest neighborhood Barrio Viejo, Teatro Carmen has stood since 1915 and is the last theater of its kind.

It's now set to be restored into a vibrant 300-seat performing arts center that'll bring new life to this landmark and the surrounding community.

(Herb) We are down in Barrio Viejo, which is one of Tucson's oldest neighborhoods.

This neighborhood is the largest existing barrio in the United States, even though two-thirds of it was taken down in '69.

So this neighborhood was very, very important to the growth and sort of the history of Tucson.

And we are sort of a landmark within that district.

My name is Herb Stratford, and I guess you would say that I am the Project Director for the Teatro Carmen restoration.

(Herb) We are standing in the auditorium of the Teatro Carmen, which is a 1915, actually it's an 1860s building, but we're standing in the 1915 iteration of that building.

Carmen Soto Vasquez, her husband gifted her this property and said to her, you can make a theater here, which in 1915 for a Hispanic woman to start a business is pretty amazing.

[chuckle] And so she had some serious gumption to do that.

And if you think about Tucson in 1915, there was maybe 15,000 people in town and at least half of them were Spanish speaking.

So this was the hub of that community.

(Herb) When the theater was active from about 1915 to 1921, what mostly took place was Spanish language theatrical productions, but also touring operas.

And then towards the end, they started having more vaudeville shows, silent films, Charlie Chaplin films, you know, just a lot of wrestling, boxing.

What's so iconic about this project is that it has Hispanic heritage, African American heritage, and Chinese heritage all within the same block.

And so that sort of makes this project really special because it's all of those things mixing together and really emblematic of how the barrio in Tucson really was an incredible melting pot of different cultures.

(Herb) There are some really key features that we're gonna be celebrating.

The pressed metal ceiling above us, the proscenium, which is the opening around the stage.

And then of course, you know, the walls, if the walls could talk.

1860s adobe walls.

So the fact that it's still here and we're now on track to get it reopened as it was originally sort of used for, is remarkable.

(Herb) The Teatro Carmen Project is sort of a campus of sorts.

So we have the theater space, which is gonna be a flexible theater space with non-fixed seating for about 300 people.

Then there next door in the Elks addition will be all the new restrooms and dressing rooms and green rooms for the artists, along with a bar and restaurant and a 7,000 square foot patio.

I also am a big believer in showing progress along the way, which is why we got the grants for the facade.

So we did the facade.

Now people can see what we're doing and the level of sophistication that we're going for.

(Herb) You know, when this building gets done, it's gonna be the home to a lot of things.

I think I can see this building being busy 365 days a year, but that is one of the greatest challenges, is we have a building that has really not had a lot of, I don't wanna say maintenance, but it has not been brought into the 20th century.

And so it's a very expensive process to come in and work with adobe and "A" Mountain brick from "A" Mountain quarries and a roof that's 110 years old.

But the encouraging thing is that everybody can't wait to get in here from musicians to the jazz festival, to the, everybody wants to be in this building.

This size building doesn't exist anywhere else downtown.

So for the community to have this as a resource is really critical.

And then nothing really speaks to the history of Tucson like this space.

This is Tucson's oldest performing arts venue.

I'm Lola Torch and I am a burlesque artist.

I am.

The most essential Tucson thing to experience is the desert.

[LAUGH] I mean obviously the culture and the food and the people but I mean we live in the middle of the Sonoran Desert and the Saguaro National Park is right here.

It's unique to where we are.

My favorite taco in Tucson, there are so many of them but I really particularly love the potato tacos from Maico on 22nd.

So good.

My favorite cocktail is a Paloma.

I love tequila.

My favorite hiking spot is the Yetman Trail on the west side.

My least favorite thing in Tucson is people who complain about the heat.

[LAUGH] I know cuz I feel like that's what everybody says but I don't mind the heat.

I like it.

If you just got here, I suggest you go hug a cactus.

It actually doesn't hurt and they don't stick in you.

(Tom) Before we go, here's a sneak peek in an in depth investigation into inmate deaths at the Pima County Jail that we're working on now with Arizona Luminaria.

[MUSIC] I remember one day a reporter asked me, Sheriff, are you doing everything you can to stop the deaths in your jail?

An investigation is underway following the death of an inmate at the Pima County detention complex.

I don't have the power to stop death.

But in 2022 and 2023, most of the deaths, there's still a high number of deaths in the jail.

And they weren't COVID related.

So COVID goes away in January of 2022 as far as our jails concerned went down to zero.

There were no COVID deaths, our cases went to the below 1% there.

And then what happens?

This thing called fentanyl.

Had a nephew that was in there, we figured he'll be safer in jail.

You figure he can't get drugs.

Well, he could get drugs.

My impression was that there certainly were a lot of facility issues and areas where it seemed like there were a lot of inmates crammed into small spaces.

I thought that the jail was there to help people, to change their life, to get them on the right path so they could live.

And now I feel like the jail is like a death trap.

I do not even want people I don't know go in there.

This is how our community is dealing with the sickest among us, criminalizing homelessness, criminalizing mental illness and substance abuse disorder.

And everybody throws up their hands and says somebody else should be doing it.

I don't have all the answers.

There's no way I should even be expected to have all those answers.

It's not one person that has the responsibility to do this or one agency and that's the problem.

(Tom) Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, we'll see you again next week.