Video

Scanner

1996, English

TAPECODE 10135

The Scanner's series of recordings feature the intercepted cellular phone conversations of unsuspecting talkers, edited into minimalist musical settings as if they were instruments.

"Scanner" is a means of mapping the city, where the scanner device itself - a handheld radio receiver - provides an anonymous window into reality cutting and pasting information to structure an alternative vernacular. It's an opportunity to record experience and highlight the threads of desire and interior narrative that we weave into our everyday lives. Whether it's eavesdropping on an illicit affair, a liaison with a prostitute, a drug deal or a simple discussion of "what's for dinner?", it all exists within an indiscriminate ocean of digital signals flying overhead, but not beyond our reach.

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Critical Writing

Art & Technology- Conversations: James Seawright: From Electronic...
by Douglas M. Davis. Art in America, Jan. 1968, v. 56, no. 1.