British electronic artist Robin Rimbaud, AKA Scanner, took his alias from the handheld gadget that provided the raw material for his “sound Polaroid” experiments in the early ‘90s, which turned intercepted cellular phone conversations into haunting minimalist compositions. In a segment filmed by the BBC later that decade, he demonstrates using his long-range radio receiver to pick up chatter in the skies over Battersea, and shows how he samples and manipulates his findings both in the studio and on stage to create ambient soundscapes full of unseen personalities and confidential exchanges: affairs, arguments, drug deals, people asking what’s for dinner.
In the clip, a caption points out that using a scanner to snoop on phone calls is actually completely legal. 'Is there such a thing as privacy anymore when video cameras survey our every moment on the street?' asks Rimbaud. 'Your every last detail is mapped out on a computer system somewhere.' Yet his rhetoric feels more curious than accusatory; when it came to his own work, he shrugged off the moral implications of listening into people’s private moments. 'It’s this completely grey area,' he told Life magazine in 1995. 'It isn’t phone phreaking [hacking]. I’m just picking up radio waves.'