Scanning Scanner

Due to a very bad case of cantankerousness, I found myself annoyed with Scanner's article.  I would have preferred five pages spent discussing a couple of projects in depth versus a series of brief glosses that do not give a good picture of what these projects did and why they were done.  For example, he tells us that performance is limited for electronic music, but not how it is limited.  I wanted to hear more about why he choose to have multiple people perform as Scanner on the same night and what it means that people believed it was him.  Why did he do it?  What did it tell him?  What does he think it tells us about the limitations of performance.

Despite this, I found his projects interesting.  My favorite piece is the Sound Polaroids.  Without romanticizing the possibilities of public participation, I enjoy projects that involve the public affecting the outcome of the project, besides it sounds (hardy har har) like a lot of fun to read teh questionnaires people filled out and then go find those sounds and record them.  I wanted to know more about how synethesia came to play in the work and why it was important.  

As for his idea that buildings store memories or more accurately, that lost memories are to be found in buildings, I find, despite a somewhat appealing poetic line like "archeology of loss," that his emphasis on "pathos" and "missed connections" frustrating.  Yes, any "archeology" digs into something that has been lost, but is it pathetic?  Could it perhaps be joyful discovery?  Perhaps it could be that we need to lose things because we cannot hold onto to everything?  And finding bits and pieces of our histories- far or recent past- give us new insights into our present moment.