Using the scanner in art can be likened to photography and print/digital print in a sense. When I used it for our project, it reminded me more of printmaking than photography. One way to view it is that the scanner takes our three-dimensional understandings of objects and forms and flattens them into two-dimensional surfaces, allowing us to see textures and shapes in a new way. It reminds me of a mixed media collograph where you use different textures and objects, only to print them and discover how different they appear once rolled with ink. When you are putting objects onto the surface of the scanner - it is blank, like a piece of paper or a canvas. Unlike photography, where you are capturing existing spaces, or creating a three-dimensionality through the use of light in a studio set up, a scan is devoid of those "environmental" elements. Instead, it is an isolated study of objects, with certain parameters of how you can view it and change it. It can be likened to running the textures of a plastic bag through a printing press, or creating rubbings of different surfaces.
