Stephanie Elise MacIntyre

I started by unscrewing all the little screws that were holding the cassettes together (4 or 5 for each cassette), taking out the tape guides, the magnetic shield and the pressure pad in each cassette. I kept all these small pieces in a pill bottle in case I found a use for them later. I wrapped up the tape and used scotch tape to tape the analog tape closed and keep it from unwrapping.

While researching Brian Dettmer, I searched everywhere for how he was able to melt the plastic enough to be able to completely change the shape of it. For example, none of the cassettes of the bird look like the original shape of a cassette tape.

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He said that he did not want to disclose his “artistic process” completely (which I understand). He only said that he heated up the tapes enough that he was able to form them using his wet hands. So I thought I would try using a heat gun and molding them with my hands.

Unfortunately, the heat gun was not hot enough to melt them enough to stay stuck together and the three pieces soon fell apart. So I went out and bought some heavy duty plastic glue and was going to shape the cassettes and then glue them together. However, after the cassettes had been melted and molded, the edges did not line up or touch enough for the glue to bond to. I tried gluing a couple of pieces together and then melting and molding them. Having them glued together made it harder to mold them because by the time I got it hot enough to form, parts of it had already cooled down. So I had to change my idea a little bit.

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Click for the new plan

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