I've always been fascinated with cassette tapes. I'd watch them spin in my cassette deck for hours, always with music playing on them, listening to the cool music I had recorded. I loved the glimmer of lights on my cassette deck and was enthralled by the way the tape made its way to the other side/spool. Obliviously this was great entertainment (low budget = parents happy). I was consumed by the tape moving and the lights changing on the deck, LIGHT. CASSETTE TAPE. MOVEMENT… sooooo, as I grew older I kept that fascination with the cassette tape and loved the MAXELL commercials with the GUY sitting in the arm chair listening to his recorded music and feeling SUFFICIENT. I like feeling sufficient that feeling when you're content have what you need the feeling I love! So this got me to thinking that I might want to do a project with cassette tapes. OH NO! I said it, the word ART PROJECT and this is where it usually ends! But no, not this time. I am taking control. I HEART cassette tapes, So I’m thinking Something with light and cassette tapes. It would be like MY yoga. Something to look at that relaxes me...
One of my biggest problems is; I think TOO BIG.....like my ASS. I wanted to do this whole wall in cassette tapes, lit from behind, but I wanted to still be able to move the tape from one spool to the other....what was I going to do; how was I going to stick to the wall, blah, blah, blah. I decided to PROTOTYPE it (start small) and then let it EVOLVE....and hell, you all know how I like EVOLUTION! So at "ART CLASS DETENTION" our once a month art group I started the little project that could. I got a piece of Plexiglas when I was in BC visiting my friend Robert. I started my project and here is where I’m at...it was a real interesting night.
first off...crazy glue worked the best for sticking half the cassette tape case to the Plexiglas.. so I didn't need the glue gun (HUFFER fondue set so to speak)
I wanted to stick the case and not the cassette to the Plexiglas so that i could still remove the cassette for future project ideas. As I started adding the cases I got more excited....
but then I ran out of cassette tapes. So I just decided I would go and start putting up against some light sources and here is what I got....
I was so excited! So now I am STALLED until I find more cassette tapes...but at ART CLASS DETENTION. My ingenious friend Pierre gave me some cool suggestions that I will talk about when I get more cassettes... I guess the moral of this story is go to ART CLASS DETENTION! It will help you turn your art project idea into the REAL DEAL! Although I am not finished...
I am well on my way....
D out.
I am well on my way....
D out.
Since the first moment I saw this, it begged me to make it move. It just makes sense, cassette tapes imply movement. In my mind's eye I see the wall of cassette tapes glued to the back of a sheet of plexiglass as they are now, but I also see another sheet of plexiglass behind them, with a hole through both sheets lined up with one of the gear holes of eaach cassette - and a geared shaft through all layers. That's the easy part. Where it gets complicated in my mind, is trying to drive the gears. Ideally, I'd like to see each cassette turning at normal 'play' speed until it gets to the end, and then rewinding at a much higher speed, just like a cassette player would do - with none of them being in sync - so it would be random which ones would be 'playing' and which would be 'rewinding' at any given time. But this would be quite a feat of engineering to make this possible! It would be much more feasible to make them all in sync - this way they could all be driven with one small electric motor, and the only real difficulty is figuring out how to drive all of them at the same time with gears - and how to get the motor to reverse itself once the end of the tape is reached.
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