An Artist's Exploration of Sound

Remembering How to Forget: An Artist’s Exploration of Sound Scanner ABSTRACT This article is an introduction to the work of electronic sound artist Scanner, which explores the place of memory, the cityscape and the relationship between the public and the private within con- Manipulation or reorganisation of pre-recorded images and Having the technology to peel temporary sound art. Beginning with a historical look at his CD re- sounds is like the process of thinking. Thus editing becomes the open virtually any zone of infor- leases a decade ago, the article superimposition of consciousness or the intelligent structuring mation and consume the con- explores his move from his cellu- of this recorded experience. tents, I used the scanner device lar phone works to his more col- itself—a modestly sophisticated laborative digital projects in re- —Bill Viola cent times. With descriptions of radio receiver—to explore the re- several significant performance lationship between the public My work explores the relationship between sound and archi- works, public art commissions and private spheres. Working and film soundtrack work, the tectural space and the spaces in between information, places, with sound in this manner sug- piece explores the resonances history and relationships, where one has to fill in the missing gested a means of mapping the and meanings with the ever-chang- parts to complete the picture. In the modern recording stu- ing digital landscape of a contem- city, in which the scanner device dio, digital technology has allowed us to search beneath the porary sound artist. provided an anonymous window surface of sound and its image through the application of into reality, cutting and pasting software that visualizes a vibration, a note. Using machines information to structure an alter- that allow us to replicate and duplicate familiar sounds by native vernacular. It was a rare opportunity to record experi- “sampling” them, we experience notions of time and memory ence and highlight the threads of desire and interior narra- displaced from their reality. When hearing a sound sample, tive that we weave into our everyday lives. The sounds of an can one know whether it is of the present or of the past? How illicit affair, a liaison with a prostitute, a drug deal or a simple might its future use alter its status? How “real” is it? How discussion of “what’s for dinner” all exist within an indiscrimi- much is dependent upon one’s recollection of its source? nate ocean of signals flying overhead, but just beyond our reach. Sharing a line of focus with American consumer pla- INTERCEPTING THE DATA STREAM giarists Negativland, who had initiated a line of almost absurdist exploration of similar territory several years before Around a decade ago the first Scanner recordings (Scanner on recordings such as Helter Stupid (1989) and Escape from 1 [1992] and Scanner 2 [1993]) featured the intercepted cel- Noise (1987), I twisted state-of-the-art technology in uncon- lular phone conversations of unsuspecting talkers, which I ventional ways to intercept highly personalized and voyeuris- edited into minimalist musical settings as if they were instru- tic forms of info food: sound recordings, phone scans, moments, bringing into focus issues of privacy and the di- dem and Net intercepts, all of which became material for my chotomy between the public and the private spectrum. multi-layered soundscapes. Every live performance, record- Sometimes the high frequency of cellular noise would per- ing or mix that has followed is still in its way a “true” represen- vade the atmosphere, at other junctures it would erupt into tation of that moment in time and in that way relates to per- words and melt down to radio hiss. Intercepted in the data formance art in the temporality of its data—a “Sound stream, transmissions would blend, blurring the voices and Polaroid”—a way of capturing the moment in sound similar rupturing the light, creating audio transparencies of to that of a Polaroid camera, which seizes an image and im- dreamy, cool ambience. I had been using voices in my work mediately exposes it to the permanence of interception. for some time previously, inspired initially by hearing recordings by English industrial artists Throbbing Gristle (on Heathen Earth [1980]) John Cage (Variations IV [1965]), HOW DO WE LISTEN TO THE SPACES Brian Eno and David Byrne (My Life in the Bush of Ghosts IN BETWEEN? [1981]), with their use of randomly mixed voices in the live environment, and eccentric English guitarist Robert Fripp’s Zooming in on these spaces in between—between language use of found voices in his Exposure recordings (1979). A and understanding, between the digital fallout of ones and chance encounter with a neighbor’s ham radio, an early zeros, between the redundant and undesired flotsam and form of radio communication favored by truckers on the jetsam of environmental acoustic space, led to a focus to- road long before cellular telephones, meant that often wards the cityscape. If an accent suggested a certain class, when I listened to records or the radio at home, their voices would be featured as uninvited guests, with my amplifier act- Scanner a.k.a. Robin Rimbaud (composer, artist), 40 Sunlight Square, London, U.K. E2 ing as a receiver for their banal communications. 6LD. E-mail: <[email protected]>. Website: <http://www.scannerdot.com>. © 2001 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 11, pp. 65–69, 2001 65 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/lmj/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/09611210152780700/1673974/09611210152780700.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 Fig. 1. Surface Noise project, 1998. Performances took place along a bus route in London for 3 nights, each reassembling fragments of the city in sound and image. Digital images of London were captured and translated into sound through software. (© Robin Rimbaud) age or attitude, then how suggestive what is an intimate yet global expres- dom questions in interviewing local was the raw sound around these con- sion of space, a simple translation of people, partly out of self-interest. From versations, how influential was the loca- the social transformations wrought by these I mapped out a walk that took tion where each conversation was held? new technologies. me from one point to another, Sound is ever present, sometimes as a minidisc in hand, recording the acous- constantly shifting whir, as a damp tic data in that place. I wanted to cre- CHARTING NEW grain of footsteps, as the drone-like ate in a sense a sound work rather like spangle of distant traffic, or as the PERFORMANCE SPACES the opening scene in Robert Altman’s seemingly motionless air that ripples Constantly shape-shifting with my movie Short Cuts (1993), in which a he- past our ears, as the elegant stuttering projects, my scavenging of the electronic licopter hovers gently over the densely trill of a bird overhead. How influential communications highways has led to a packed city landscape and the film fo- was this common envelope of space, multitude of collaborations. cuses or scans into moments in the the environment in which we consume daily lives of its inhabitants. It is a mo- sound and music? How does one de- Listening to the Sound tion across a city, an architectural elec- fine the spaces between music and of the City tronic scanning of an almost invisible sound? When we listen to a Walkman, In 1998 I became a visiting Fellow to sound wave. Liverpool, like most cities, how do we distinguish between that John Moore’s University in Liverpool, has its very own sound dialect. Histori- which is intended—the sound car- where as “Professor Scanner” I created cally one can recall the sound of the rier—and that which is incidental: pass- a CD, Stopstarting, which explored the docks, the railway station, the Cavern ing traffic, the roar of a plane, the acoustic debris of the city, premiering Club where the Beatles played their screech of a train door, your own foot- at the International Symposia on Elec- earliest live shows, their brittle tunes steps? Whether active (creator) or pas- tronic Art (ISEA) conference in Sep- floating through the air. Voices, traffic sive (listener) we set up a virtual space tember of that year. For this project I lights, announcement speakers, buses, in which we are each free to explore chose significant points of sound lo- building work, footsteps, telephones the sonorous and acoustic strata of cated in the city, partly based on ran- and cash machines were manipulated 66 Scanner, Remembering How to Forget Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/lmj/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/09611210152780700/1673974/09611210152780700.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 and transformed into a composition tective fiction, and use a more narra- boundaries and exploring connections that captured this Sound Polaroid of tively driven but amazingly emotive form within his work. Liverpool in 1998. of explication. Sound Polaroids Surface Noise Alphaville This issue of collecting memories of The Surface Noise project, with producers In 1999 I was invited to re-soundtrack sound has continued to exert overt pres- Artangel in London, followed shortly af- Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal 1965 film sure on my working methods. In 1999, I terwards in October 1998. It explored Alphaville. A cult classic and a film that began working with U.K. graphic artist the wow and flutter of my own city (Fig. pushed the very medium itself beyond Paul Farrington, a.k.a. Tonne, focusing 1), taking people on a red Routemaster its limits, Alphaville has intrigued me on the richest of junk heaps, London, for bus journey across the city from Big Ben since I was a student.

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