solipsistic NATION No. 86: Scanner

Scanner raises the question of our governments who are more and more eavesdropping on our phone calls and reading our email and text messages. It’s one thing for an artists to do it but quite another for the government to do it. The common explanation these days is that the government is doing it to monitor for terrorists but it also acts as yet another panopticon to keep people under control. As Foucault observed, if you think you are constantly being monitored you will begin policing yourself which is very unsettling.

Robin has since moved away from using recorded phone conversations in his music but he’s always had a unique of making me questioning and reevaluating the world I live in and always shifting the context. Robin is a perfect example of one of the reasons I love electronic music so much because it has the capacity to go far beyond a dance track with cool sounds.