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Photo: Robin Rimbaud

If a photo of Jennifer Lopez or Lenny Kravitz is music to your ears, you're not alone.

Experimental electronic guru Scanner is living up to his name by making music with a unique computer program that translates scanned images into sounds.

If you think that sounds strange, you're not alone.

"My life is always full of doing the strangest things," said Scanner, born Robin Rimbaud.

On his new album, Wave of Light by Wave of Light, Scanner (under the modified alias Scannerfunk) uses Metasynth — a sort of half-Photoshop, half-synthesizer — to create what he believes is the next step in digital sampling.

"I've wanted to make a fairly good-spirited, optimistic record for a long time," said Scanner, a London native who admits his previous dozen or so albums are not exactly easy listening. "But I didn't just want to sample other people — take a James Brown track and stick a breakbeat in there. What [Metasynth] basically does is read all the pixels that make up the image.

"Where there is a darker patch, it makes it louder; where it's lighter, it makes it quieter. Where there is more red in an image or whatever, it moves the sound to the left- or the right-hand side of the stereo signal. It's a very clever synthesizer, in a way." Scanner began playing around with Metasynth — which was also used by British producer Aphex Twin on his wacky Windowlicker — during an art installation involving photographs of various London landmarks. He was intrigued by the results and decided to apply the unusual music-making method to his new album.

"I thought, wouldn't it be fun to just take a photo at random," Scanner said. "Then I thought, this is a pop record, who's a pop figure? So I just went to a music Web site, and there was a photograph of Lenny Kravitz.

"Of course the sound was nothing like Lenny himself would make," he said of the track, later labeled "Cosy Veneer." "It produced a very strange rhythm," Scanner continued. "I started taking other pictures of Lenny and making little sounds out of them to layer over it. I had to use it. Such an interesting discussion can emerge from this about the rights and wrongs of sampling. Where does it take you when you make a sound out of a photograph?" A spokesperson at Virgin, Kravitz's label, was unaware of the track.

Making music with Metasynth and sampling differ, Scanner said, in that an artist would have a hard time proving you used his or her photo. The program is not full proof, nor does it yield the same results every time it transforms a photo, but it does suggest a way of moving forward.

"It's an amazingly inspiring piece of software," Scanner said. "It was made in Los Angeles, and you can just picture a group of bearded men in polyester trousers sitting in a room going, 'Cool, man,' as Grateful Dead plays on the background." Kravitz is the only celebrity given the Metasynth treatment on Wave of Light by Wave of Light, which is due March 6 on Sulfur/Beggars Group. Scanner will debut several tracks based on a new subject when he performs at the opening of the digital art expo "010101: Art in Technological Times" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Friday.

"What I'm doing is, I've taken photographs of Jennifer Lopez. It's purely research of course," Scanner said, trailing off into laughter. "I actually took some images from her last video. God knows what it will sound like. It's damn fun, I tell you. It beats sitting at home tuning your guitar, trying to come up with inspiration for a new song." A spokesperson for Lopez was unavailable for comment.

Scanner, 36, is revered in techno circles for his contributions to electronic music. His name comes from his breakthrough recordings, based on conversations held over police scanners and short-wave radios, though he has also established himself as a minimalist techno producer and remixer.

Along with his opening presentation for "010101," which will include a collaboration with German artist Carsten Nicolai, Scanner will perform a live, improvised soundtrack to the classic '60s sci-fi film noir "Alphaville" on Saturday.

Scanner also has a number of other innovative projects planned. In the summer, he will construct a public art project, called "Needle Cut," in Washington, DC's subway system.

"I'm actually making all the Metro stations underwater," Scanner said. "With sound and light it will seem like you are going beneath the sea's level." In Gothenburg, Sweden, Scanner is modifying bus stops with his artistic touch.

"I'm amplifying them, so if you put your ear to the bus stop, you can hear another bus stop and people talking to each other," he said. "You can communicate with them by talking into the bus stop. It's just a way for people to communicate in a big city." Scanner will embark on an even stranger communication venture with Los Angeles artist Mike Kelly Paris in the fall.

"We're working with Jim Morrison of the Doors and a few other dead people," Scanner deadpanned. "We're working with mediums and spiritualists and getting their ghosts and doing a live show with them. The bill will say, 'Scanner With Jim Morrison Live in Paris.' " Much of Scanner's catalog is available for free as downloadable MP3s on Scannerdot.com. He also performs live on occasion and plans to mount his first North American tour in three years in July to promote Wave of Light by Wave of Light, his proudest accomplishment to date.

"I've never made a record that you could listen to from start to finish," he said. "This is my first you can listen to without screaming."

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• Lenny Kravitz

August 1 [12:00 EDT] -- Robin Rimbaud, better known in the electronic music world as Scanner, has a new album out called "Delivery," ["Heidi" Video, 1.2MB QuickTime] on which he certainly lives up to his handle.

Scanner's ambient soundscapes are layered with snippets of cell-phone conversations snatched out of the air with a device called the "Realistic Model Pro-43 Hyperscanner," which is readily available at Radio Shack stores.

Of course, cell-phone scanning, a clear invasion of privacy, is illegal in this country. Scanner appears to have avoided legal problems by pitch-shifting the voices he picks up, and editing out surnames, numbers and addresses. The element of voyeurism involved in all of this somewhat unsettling anyway, but Rimbaud says that's the appeal.

Scanner told MTV News.

"When you're at school and with your friends you always want to know what your friends really think about you, and you're just curious in that moment. I think some of us are just voyeurs."

While Scanner renders the principles of his stolen conversations virtually unrecognizable, it doesn't keep those him around him from wondering if he's been pilfering their calls.

"When I've had friends who say, 'That's me on the record,' I know it's not them because I have the original conversation and I can play it at the original speed and soon they go, 'It wasn't me, was it?'"

You can pick up a copy of "Delivery" and listen in for yourself.

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