Ground control to Major Tom: Satellite seeing, GPS drawing, and (outer)space

In this chapter I explore satellite seeing in the convergence of global visual culture as a human-satellite co-figuration. Satellites, Global Positioning Systems, and mobile devices are engaged as prosthetic extensions of an embodied experience that can augment the potential of place-based learning. I engage this co-figuration through Mirzoeff's (2000/2006) notion of intervisuality and diaspora, the work of contemporary artists Trevor Paglen and Jeremy Wood, and my experiences with graduate students in Helsinki, Finland in an intensive course that developed understandings of the city as a site of geographic and cultural identity while exploring ideas of public space and performative interventionist practices in art making. The relations of the human-satellite co-figuration give insight as to the convergence of the local as a scale of the global, imprinted with transcultural pathways for understanding how we are located in the world.