News
Death of the Cassette Tape
DEATH OF CASSETTES MEANS TAPES ARE TRENDY
Cassettes may be a thing of the past for electrical giants Curry’s but Brighton photographic artists Jodi and Jody Moxon reckon there’s life in the old tapes yet.
Curry’s say that once they have sold their current stocks of blank cassettes at their 500 stores around Britain no more will be sold.
The decision, by the last High Street chain to stock cassettes, signals the death knell for the most popular music and computer games format of the early Eighties.
But the husband and wife snappers are already cashing in on Eighties nostalgia with their giant photos of cassettes gracing the walls of trendy homes.
Their Big Tape Art pictures are part of this month’s Brighton Fringe and are on show at the Riki Tik Café bar in Bond Street, Brighton.
And they have attracted orders from London, Ireland and across the UK for the limited edition pictures of cassette computer games originally used on the earliest ZX Spectrum computer.
Said Jodi (girl), : “ The project started as a reaction to arguments over file sharing on the Internet. A lot of time people think of ownership as this ultimate thing.
“Cassette tapes are virtually antiques now and like a lot of people we remember sharing music and computer games with our friends when we were kids.
“We didn’t realize they’d have such wide appeal but I guess there is a lot of Eighties nostalgia at the moment.
Added Jody (boy), : “The fact that stuff like this is becoming obsolete makes it even more interesting.”
“The pictures have created a bit of a stir on some arty websites and people seem to either love them or hate them. “
Cassette sales peaked in the 1980s and in 1989 sales reached 83 million but this year only 100,000 have been sold.
Argos 09/05/2007