Last July, we spoke with English electronic composer Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner about the two-hour soundtrack he composed under the gun for United Visual Artists’ (UVA) Conductor in Lyon—the second rendition of the sound and light sculpture originally debuted as the Coachella main stage—right before the third interpretation of the piece Room with a View (set to an entirely new score) traveled to São Paulo and Beijing.We caught up with him in New York, as UVA had brought him on once again to compose the soundtrack for their latest LED cube interpretation Origin. He recalled the piece’s growth, its inspiration and rattled off a ton of projects he’s been working on simultaneously. As if we already didn’t know about his precise, superhuman work ethic, we’re still taken aback by how he still manages to crank out work like a hyperactive madman.The Creators Project: Weren’t you just in Montreal for Nuits Blanche earlier this month? Were you collaborating with UVA up there?
Scanner: No, actually. It was funny, we were there at the same time. I had a separate installation in the financial district and they had a piece in the commercial shopping center so we met on the top of a building 46 stories high to say hello. I went to see their piece and they went to see mine, but we didn’t work together.What piece did you exhibit there? I’m not sure I’m familiar.
It was a wild piece. It was a collaboration with two friends from London [Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard] and it was about surveillance, so we had huge search lights following people around in the financial district. We had flashing strobe lights inside the banks, smoke going off and this terrifying soundtrack that was a kind of CSI-meets-Cloverfield, an end-of-the-world type scenario, so people arrived expecting a film crew to be around. It was very apocalyptic and you had the sense that something was about to happen, but you never knew what. It was extraordinary, the Canadians went wild, I mean really wild.Still from Soon.
What was the piece titled?
It was called Soon, so the anticipation of something happening. At one point, some Canadian guy stood by a sort of a water pond in the middle, and he put his hands in the air. There were people going, “AHH,” and somebody else put their hands in the air and suddenly it was as if there was a UFO about to land and everybody was standing there, 100 people or so, with their hands in the air, staring up in the sky as the lights were moving. It was really quite wild, actually. That’s what I did in Canada.That’s insane. So tell me more about what you’ve been working on with UVA.
With UVA we made the piece in Lyon [Conductor] that then went to Beijing [Room with a View], as a different piece. We keep changing the name and changing the soundtrack. But I mean, they gave me a lot of free space in a sense.Conductor; Photo by James Medcraft.Room with a View; Photo by James Medcraft.I wanted to use something that connected to New York, so what you hear, if you stay there long enough, is lots of New York voices. You hear stolen cell phone conversations of people talking about going to keep fit classes, having their car repaired by a mechanic, which have been sliced up into a million pieces. So sometimes you understand and sometimes you don’t, and then sometimes the voices become something else, they become another kind of texture. So what you’re hearing largely is people speaking on the telephone in New York, but then transformed to digital technology and reacting and responding to the light. So the two things are talking to each other, and there’s this conversation between the light and the sound. In a way it’s really, really simple. It’s very reductive, it’s taking a lot of stuff away. The other pieces were quite busy. I use voices in all of them and I like to use voices because it’s something very human. You know, we’re looking at very digital artwork and it’s nice to make something, I feel, that has a resonance with the kind of humanity behind the work. The UVA work is strictly digital, which is very dystopian, cold, clear, sharp…Very geometric.
Absolutely. And mathematical. And my [soundtracks are] often more organic and more emotional, which is why I like to use the voice. We all have a relationship to the voice.There are other languages mixed in there too, is that correct?
Yes. They’re stolen phone calls, basically. I hacked into people’s mobile phone conversations, so basically what you’re hearing—technically one could use the term “illegal,” but I wouldn’t dare use that term. People are speaking in French, Korean, Chinese, Dutch, Austrian, German, all kinds of accents I’ve just picked up here.It’s all on an analog phone network and I recorded all this illegally. In my archive I had a massive collection of Australian voices, British voices, etc., etc. and I have this file called “New York voices.” It’s ridiculous. I mean, it’s hours and hours of people just talking on their cell phones about the banality of things people talk about and I decided to use it in the work. It’s funny, I think, if somebody come here and they suddenly pick up this New York accent, or you suddenly hear a woman say, “He’s got a Ricky Ricardo accent.” It’s so bizarre.Origin; Photo by James Medcraft.I travel quite a lot for my work, and the one thing I like to do is make sure [artwork] resonates with where you are. You know, so if you go on holiday and you want to go Italy and then you want to go to the UK, you take photographs and your photographs would demonstrate that you were in Italy, and then you were in the UK. There’s a different architecture. People dress differently, they have different hairstyles, they have difference shaped faces, they speak different languages. And so I want to always make works that are reflective of the area. So if I work in New York, it’s more rewarding for me to make something that echoes where I am, it’s a bit like taking a photograph. What you’re largely hearing when I make my work are reflections of those places. When I work in different countries, quite often I will incorporate those sounds. Many projects I’ve made in the past have connections to cities where I work.Where are you headed next?
I’m going to Berlin. I’ve got a photography exhibition for my photos, it’s quite funny, in a museum. Then I go to Paris, I’m working with a ballet company. Then Buenos Aires next month for a ridiculous project, a hundred thousand people outdoors and I’m writing an orchestral piece for a live orchestra and opera singer. And a big project is this Joy Division project I’m working on.Tell me about that!
I’m musical director of a project called Live_Transmission premiering in the UK next year, and with the blessing of all the bands and Peter Saville who designed all the Joy Division and New Order record sleeves, they’ve all agreed to grant me the grace of their will or whatever. So I’m writing a new 70-minute piece inspired by an idea of where Joy Division would be today. So if they were still around, what would they be making. And then working with a 30-piece orchestra, a live rock band and original sources of the Joy Division tape, so I can say I want Ian Curtis’ voice singing this, and I can get a hold of all these things. I’m writing all the music and it’s going to be scored in Berlin for the orchestra and then they come to London to perform this piece.Joy Division: “Transmission”Is it going to travel at all?
At the moment we have this one-off show, really ambitious show and I think it’s going to go to Amsterdam, maybe to the Holland Festival. Hopefully, as time passes it will come to the US.That would be great.
I mean, Joy Division is a big enough kind of cult name. We have a visual artist working on it as well, there’s two people visualizing the whole thing. It’s a massive performance, you can imagine. They have such a history, Joy Division. I know in the first morning, the first hour, we sold 300 tickets so it was really rock ‘n’ roll to have that kind of moment. And it’s in February, it’s really soon, so I’m finishing that up. I tend to work on too many projects at the same time.Next week, I arrive back in London at 7 o’clock Monday morning and I’m straight in the studio scoring a new British horror film called House Swap, it comes out next year. So literally, I go straight in and do this type of work. My life is always shape-shifting with these different things. I’m super hyperactive, like a kid that gets really excited about doing these things. I love it actually, and I turn things around quite quickly. I work with fashion designers, graphic designers, motion artists or my own work. I’m making short films, et cetera, et cetera. It’s nice. The one thing I never do, if call myself as a musician, is just release a CD. I’ve released six albums this year, but I never just release one album. Literally six albums have come out this year.Paci Dalò and Scanner: The Maya Effect (2011)It’s amazing the amount of work you’re putting out.
Yeah, I’m a good boy like that. It’s not always good stuff. I try my best. I mean a year ago I released a jazz album with two New York musicians, like a proper jazz album. It seemed really successful, it was a creative and commercial successful. But then I released two ballet scores this year and I have a pop record coming out with a British singer in a few weeks and it’s fun, you know.Do you prefer to collaborate with artists in a specific medium, like visual artists, or working with someone like UVA or working with the ballet companies?
I mean ballet is really lovely. What I like is that it’s not about me, that’s what I like. The way I would describe my career is I’m just under the surface. People don’t need to know who I am, I can just be almost invisible and then I can rise up and do this project and disappear again. To me, that’s the best reward. When I work with a ballet company, for example with the Dutch National Ballet this year, 14,000 people came to see this piece. I just sit in the audience, no one knows it’s me. I just have to walk out at the end and take my little bow. I can go back to the hotel and go to bed, and you don’t have this big ego thing going on. I get a bit shy and that’s the truth of it.Dutch National Ballet: Labyrinth (2011)I think what I really enjoy is I think I’ve found myself in a position of great risk, so people will come to me when they don’t know quite what they want to do. So I will have a film director come to me and say, “I wrote this film and I need this soundtrack written really quickly, this is what I want and I’ve heard you can do this.” And I can do it, you know. Or Philips, the people who invented the light bulb and the CD player, I work with them a lot, so I designed the sound for a wake up alarm clock. So now, a quarter of a million people wake up to me everyday, which is funny.Jasper Morrison with Scanner for Punkt.
Yeah! I play live, I do shows, but it’s so egotistical sometimes, these kind of things. I’m not so good at that. I try to find ways of hiding. Collaborations are a really great way of hiding, you know away from who I have to be. There’s enough things going on that keep me stimulated, excited, and you know, I’m very disciplined. I don’t work at night, I don’t work after 7 o’clock, ever. I refuse to. And I start early, I start at 7 o’clock.I’m sort of old fashioned in a way. Lots of people complain about things, and what people tend to do is say, “Oh, this artist is more successful than me,” or “Oh, this person has a show and I want to have a show, and he’s got an exhibition.” Lots of people forget to look at themselves and see where they are compared to all the other people, maybe behind them. So I feel really grateful everyday.
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Scanner: No, actually. It was funny, we were there at the same time. I had a separate installation in the financial district and they had a piece in the commercial shopping center so we met on the top of a building 46 stories high to say hello. I went to see their piece and they went to see mine, but we didn’t work together.What piece did you exhibit there? I’m not sure I’m familiar.
It was a wild piece. It was a collaboration with two friends from London [Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard] and it was about surveillance, so we had huge search lights following people around in the financial district. We had flashing strobe lights inside the banks, smoke going off and this terrifying soundtrack that was a kind of CSI-meets-Cloverfield, an end-of-the-world type scenario, so people arrived expecting a film crew to be around. It was very apocalyptic and you had the sense that something was about to happen, but you never knew what. It was extraordinary, the Canadians went wild, I mean really wild.
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It was called Soon, so the anticipation of something happening. At one point, some Canadian guy stood by a sort of a water pond in the middle, and he put his hands in the air. There were people going, “AHH,” and somebody else put their hands in the air and suddenly it was as if there was a UFO about to land and everybody was standing there, 100 people or so, with their hands in the air, staring up in the sky as the lights were moving. It was really quite wild, actually. That’s what I did in Canada.That’s insane. So tell me more about what you’ve been working on with UVA.
With UVA we made the piece in Lyon [Conductor] that then went to Beijing [Room with a View], as a different piece. We keep changing the name and changing the soundtrack. But I mean, they gave me a lot of free space in a sense.Conductor; Photo by James Medcraft.Room with a View; Photo by James Medcraft.I wanted to use something that connected to New York, so what you hear, if you stay there long enough, is lots of New York voices. You hear stolen cell phone conversations of people talking about going to keep fit classes, having their car repaired by a mechanic, which have been sliced up into a million pieces. So sometimes you understand and sometimes you don’t, and then sometimes the voices become something else, they become another kind of texture. So what you’re hearing largely is people speaking on the telephone in New York, but then transformed to digital technology and reacting and responding to the light. So the two things are talking to each other, and there’s this conversation between the light and the sound. In a way it’s really, really simple. It’s very reductive, it’s taking a lot of stuff away. The other pieces were quite busy. I use voices in all of them and I like to use voices because it’s something very human. You know, we’re looking at very digital artwork and it’s nice to make something, I feel, that has a resonance with the kind of humanity behind the work. The UVA work is strictly digital, which is very dystopian, cold, clear, sharp…
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Absolutely. And mathematical. And my [soundtracks are] often more organic and more emotional, which is why I like to use the voice. We all have a relationship to the voice.There are other languages mixed in there too, is that correct?
Yes. They’re stolen phone calls, basically. I hacked into people’s mobile phone conversations, so basically what you’re hearing—technically one could use the term “illegal,” but I wouldn’t dare use that term. People are speaking in French, Korean, Chinese, Dutch, Austrian, German, all kinds of accents I’ve just picked up here.It’s all on an analog phone network and I recorded all this illegally. In my archive I had a massive collection of Australian voices, British voices, etc., etc. and I have this file called “New York voices.” It’s ridiculous. I mean, it’s hours and hours of people just talking on their cell phones about the banality of things people talk about and I decided to use it in the work. It’s funny, I think, if somebody come here and they suddenly pick up this New York accent, or you suddenly hear a woman say, “He’s got a Ricky Ricardo accent.” It’s so bizarre.Origin; Photo by James Medcraft.I travel quite a lot for my work, and the one thing I like to do is make sure [artwork] resonates with where you are. You know, so if you go on holiday and you want to go Italy and then you want to go to the UK, you take photographs and your photographs would demonstrate that you were in Italy, and then you were in the UK. There’s a different architecture. People dress differently, they have different hairstyles, they have difference shaped faces, they speak different languages. And so I want to always make works that are reflective of the area. So if I work in New York, it’s more rewarding for me to make something that echoes where I am, it’s a bit like taking a photograph. What you’re largely hearing when I make my work are reflections of those places. When I work in different countries, quite often I will incorporate those sounds. Many projects I’ve made in the past have connections to cities where I work.
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I’m going to Berlin. I’ve got a photography exhibition for my photos, it’s quite funny, in a museum. Then I go to Paris, I’m working with a ballet company. Then Buenos Aires next month for a ridiculous project, a hundred thousand people outdoors and I’m writing an orchestral piece for a live orchestra and opera singer. And a big project is this Joy Division project I’m working on.Tell me about that!
I’m musical director of a project called Live_Transmission premiering in the UK next year, and with the blessing of all the bands and Peter Saville who designed all the Joy Division and New Order record sleeves, they’ve all agreed to grant me the grace of their will or whatever. So I’m writing a new 70-minute piece inspired by an idea of where Joy Division would be today. So if they were still around, what would they be making. And then working with a 30-piece orchestra, a live rock band and original sources of the Joy Division tape, so I can say I want Ian Curtis’ voice singing this, and I can get a hold of all these things. I’m writing all the music and it’s going to be scored in Berlin for the orchestra and then they come to London to perform this piece.Joy Division: “Transmission”Is it going to travel at all?
At the moment we have this one-off show, really ambitious show and I think it’s going to go to Amsterdam, maybe to the Holland Festival. Hopefully, as time passes it will come to the US.
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I mean, Joy Division is a big enough kind of cult name. We have a visual artist working on it as well, there’s two people visualizing the whole thing. It’s a massive performance, you can imagine. They have such a history, Joy Division. I know in the first morning, the first hour, we sold 300 tickets so it was really rock ‘n’ roll to have that kind of moment. And it’s in February, it’s really soon, so I’m finishing that up. I tend to work on too many projects at the same time.Next week, I arrive back in London at 7 o’clock Monday morning and I’m straight in the studio scoring a new British horror film called House Swap, it comes out next year. So literally, I go straight in and do this type of work. My life is always shape-shifting with these different things. I’m super hyperactive, like a kid that gets really excited about doing these things. I love it actually, and I turn things around quite quickly. I work with fashion designers, graphic designers, motion artists or my own work. I’m making short films, et cetera, et cetera. It’s nice. The one thing I never do, if call myself as a musician, is just release a CD. I’ve released six albums this year, but I never just release one album. Literally six albums have come out this year.Paci Dalò and Scanner: The Maya Effect (2011)It’s amazing the amount of work you’re putting out.
Yeah, I’m a good boy like that. It’s not always good stuff. I try my best. I mean a year ago I released a jazz album with two New York musicians, like a proper jazz album. It seemed really successful, it was a creative and commercial successful. But then I released two ballet scores this year and I have a pop record coming out with a British singer in a few weeks and it’s fun, you know.
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I mean ballet is really lovely. What I like is that it’s not about me, that’s what I like. The way I would describe my career is I’m just under the surface. People don’t need to know who I am, I can just be almost invisible and then I can rise up and do this project and disappear again. To me, that’s the best reward. When I work with a ballet company, for example with the Dutch National Ballet this year, 14,000 people came to see this piece. I just sit in the audience, no one knows it’s me. I just have to walk out at the end and take my little bow. I can go back to the hotel and go to bed, and you don’t have this big ego thing going on. I get a bit shy and that’s the truth of it.Dutch National Ballet: Labyrinth (2011)I think what I really enjoy is I think I’ve found myself in a position of great risk, so people will come to me when they don’t know quite what they want to do. So I will have a film director come to me and say, “I wrote this film and I need this soundtrack written really quickly, this is what I want and I’ve heard you can do this.” And I can do it, you know. Or Philips, the people who invented the light bulb and the CD player, I work with them a lot, so I designed the sound for a wake up alarm clock. So now, a quarter of a million people wake up to me everyday, which is funny.Jasper Morrison with Scanner for Punkt.
And because of that, I’ve been working with Jasper Morrison, a British designer, and I’ve designed the sound of a new telephone, then alarm clock, a new mobile phone and a wristwatch. And so I like those things because they’re just products, and you might happen to have one of the watches that you don’t know that I made. I love those kinds of things, when you filter out into a world beyond music, visual art or film—when it reaches people who have never gone to your concert. Karen O [‘s psycho-opera] is a good example of that. That’s where I’d like to find a place for myself. I like to make works where the people who experience it won’t come to one of my concerts, probably, they won’t buy a CD, but they will engage and reap some pleasure, reward, challenge, disturbance, excitement, whatever it may be. To me, that’s the best thing. It really has a resonance then, you know. It’s not about releasing a CD, selling units, playing concerts.…playing live?
Yeah! I play live, I do shows, but it’s so egotistical sometimes, these kind of things. I’m not so good at that. I try to find ways of hiding. Collaborations are a really great way of hiding, you know away from who I have to be. There’s enough things going on that keep me stimulated, excited, and you know, I’m very disciplined. I don’t work at night, I don’t work after 7 o’clock, ever. I refuse to. And I start early, I start at 7 o’clock.I’m sort of old fashioned in a way. Lots of people complain about things, and what people tend to do is say, “Oh, this artist is more successful than me,” or “Oh, this person has a show and I want to have a show, and he’s got an exhibition.” Lots of people forget to look at themselves and see where they are compared to all the other people, maybe behind them. So I feel really grateful everyday.