Yolande Harris talk on art + GPS: Sun Run Sun April 28, 2008

Sun Run Sun is an ancient system of celestial navigation, a historic
precursor to the GPS technologies Harris employs in her series of the same
name. The artist charts a path between environmental awareness and
technological development, using sound as the medium to enhance both. The
project investigates the split between the embodied experience of location
and the calculated data of position, exploring the individual experience of
current location technologies through a personal experience of sound. It
seeks to (re)establish a sense of connectedness to one's environment, and to
(re)negotiate this through an investigation into old, new, future and animal
navigation using sound.

Sun Run Sun consists of two different parts, a sound installation and a
series of portable instruments to take on a walk through the city. In the
installation 'Dead Reckoning' Harris reveals the patterns of orbiting
satellites coming in and out of range and inconsistencies in how GPS
technology locates the self in a longitude/latitude grid. The mobile
'Satellite Sounders' transform the live satellite data directly into a sonic
composition listened to on headphones as one walks through the city. Live
signals from satellites in orbit, together with the performer's coordinates
on earth, generate a continuously transforming electronic soundscape.
Yolande Harris's soundscape questions what is inside and what is outside,
what it means to be located and what it means to be lost.

Yolande's Sonic Navigations website: http://yolande.janvaneyck.nl/landscape.htm

Official Website: http://artsci.ucla.edu