Scanner [UK] /// HARRY SMITH at 100

Harry Smith (1923-1991) was a great American eccentric, experimental filmmaker musicologist, graphic designer, bohemian, anthropologist and record collector. He looked at the world through the eyes of an ethnographer and cultural anthropologist and had a voracious appetite for information. Eschewing standard ethnographic practices Smith explored both “high” and “low” art forms, mixing the local and the global and recombining these with a hallucinatory notion of “making it new.” He was also a collector of found objects and sounds, an occultist and visual artist whose achievements included the world's largest known private paper airplane collection, and mastery of hundreds of string figures (like the Cat's Cradle) from around the world. 'The Anthology of American Folk Music’ is perhaps his most famous contribution, "the most important American mixtape ever made." (Pitchfork) Robin Rimbaud - Scanner was invited by the Harry Smith Archives to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth by performing live film scores to a wide selection of his films. Ever in motion, these films offer up a cinematic universe of shape, colour, light and time. Rhythmic, raw, surreal and playful, this programme offers up a fresh, dynamic connection between the past and present. Magic will prevail.

Scanner (British artist Robin Rimbaud) traverses the experimental terrain between sound and space connecting a bewilderingly diverse array of genres. Since 1991 he has been intensely active in sonic art, producing concerts, installations and recordings, the albums Mass Observation (1994), Delivery (1997), and An Ascent (2020) hailed by critics as innovative and inspirational works of contemporary electronic music.Rimbaud began composing for professional productions in 1982. Since then he has performed and created works in many of the world’s most prestigious spaces including SFMOMA USA, Hayward Gallery London, Pompidou Centre Paris, Tate Modern London, Kunsthalle Vienna, Bolshoi Theatre Moscow, Hanoi Opera House Vietnam and the Royal Opera House London.To date he has scored 75 contemporary dance productions, including works for the London Royal Ballet and Merce Cunningham. In 2016 he installed his Water Drops sound work in Rijeka Airport in Croatia, Ghosts at Cliveden National Trust UK, and scored the world’s first ever Virtual Reality ballet, Nightfall.In 2004 his Sound Surface (with Stephen Vitiello) was the first Sound Art commission for Tate Modern London. He scored the hit musical comedy Kirikou & Karaba (2007) and Narnia ballet (2015) based on the popular children’s book and the re-opening of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 2012. Commercial work has included sound designing the Philips Wake-Up Light (2009), the Dream for Sprint Telephones/Leo Burnett in the USA, and the sound for the Cisco telephone systems used in offices around the world in 2019. Most recently he set up the Robin Rimbaud Art Foundation in the UK.His work Salles des Departs is permanently installed in a working morgue in Paris whilst Vex, the residential house he designed a permanent soundtrack with Chance de Silva architects, won the RIBA London Award 2018 and was featured on the popular TV show Grand Designs.Committed to working with cutting edge practitioners he collaborated with Bryan Ferry, Wayne MacGregor, Mike Kelley, Torres, Pauline Oliveros, Michael Nyman, Steve McQueen, Laurie Anderson, and Hussein Chalayan, amongst many others.