What is ArtCassette?

ArtCassette is a community art recording device. The cassette itself is made out of Acrylic pieces and resembles a music cassette tape. The cassette holds a blank roll of paper which can be drawn on in small window and advanced to get fresh paper.

Participants were invited to draw a doodle, a sketch or a masterpiece.

ArtCassette at Otago Museum (19th February - 4 March 2018)

ArtCassette was set up in the 1st floor atrium in Otago Museum.

Check out the videos showing the Art produced at Otago Museum.

ArtCassette Dunedin Public Art Gallery (May 2018)

ArtCassette was set up in the the Ground floor “playspace” at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery for the month of May, 2018. This was part of DPAG’s NZ Music month offerings. Jon Chapman provided a playlist of Dunedin Sound Music for people to listen to while they drew on the Cassette.

Check out the video below which shows the Art people produced.

How I made the Cassette

I got the rolls of paper for ArtCassette for free because they are leftover pieces from cutting large format paper down from imperial (e.g. 32 inches) to A series (e.g. A0 - 841mm).

I designed ArtCassette on a computer using a vector graphics package. Then I got the pieces laser cut from acrylic sheets. I made the curved parts by first heating the acrylic on an oven element and then bending the hot-part around a wooden curve template. I experimented with different glueing techniques, but in the end went with super-glue. Glueing the parts together without the glue being too noticeable was quite difficult and something I would like to improve on. Here are some photos from various stages of the ArtCassette production process.

Why I made ArtCassette

I made ArtCassette because I wanted to explore how people would react to this unusual medium for an artwork. Here are a few key things I wanted to explore.

How would individuals approach this medium?

Would they draw something small or fill up the window? How would the movement of the medium affect their work? Would they consider playback? Would their drawing be static or evolving as it was played through?

How would people react to the previous drawing?

Would they follow a theme, or branch out on their own? Would they evolve the drawing? What would happen after multiple drawings?

What emergent properties would this work have?

Are there any emergent properties of drawing in this medium? Anything surprising or interesting?

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Rachel Cooper for coordinating ArtCassette at Otago Museum. Thanks to Lynda Cullen, Lauren Gutsell for coordinating ArtCassette at Dunedin Public Art Gallery Playspace. Special thanks to Jon Chapman for curating the excellent music playlists at DPAG>

Licence for reuse

'ArtCassette' by Luke Easterbrook is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://lukeeasterbrook.org/