Having used cassettes for years I am now getting rid of them, or at least I am in the process of getting rid of them and it has thrown up a lot of interesting issues for me. I’ve categorised these issues.

Content:

• Re-listening to my old tapes has made me want to revisit a body of work that I haven’t listened to in a very long time
• It has made me remember how good some of my old material is (in my opinion of course)

Physical:

• I still like the linear nature of tape
• I like the fact that tape is limited in so many ways
• Some tapes / cassettes have a real character and are impossible to replicate with digital recording

It also intrigues me that so many digital recording processes use tape as a user interface analogy. I suppose that it is just a very simple and easy to understand representation of a recording. However, as tape and cassettes become an ever distant memory I think that a new metaphor for recording will be needed. I wonder what that will be?

Anyway, I’m moving forward with my cassette clearance project. I still have around 40 – 50 tapes to go, and I won’t be getting rid of all of them either. Some I will keep for sentimental reasons and some because the tapes themselves are unusual or rare.

I’ve really enjoyed this process so far and like a lot of personal projects I’m not sure I particularly want it to finish, but I think it will, probably early on in 2011. I’ll let you know.