The Chicago Tapes Project
founded in 2005 by Ilana Percher and Aay Preston-Myint

The Chicago Tapes Project is based on the planting and sharing of cassette tapes throughout the streets of Chicago. Found audio, mix tapes, loops, sound projects and other recordings are hidden in throughout the city in locations marked with a signature stencil, enclosed along with each tape. Participating citizens will leave and find hidden treasures and sonic communiqués for one another in an otherwise alienating environment that is frequently tuned out by the senses. Members of the community can make themselves known to one another or choose to remain anonymous, and have total creative freedom in their contributions to the project. The one "rule" for the planted tapes, however, is that each tape must come equipped with a copy of the stencil design and instructions, allowing the discoverer to create a new location. Each cassette is like a fruit-bearing seed that will allow, through community participation, the weedlike spread of the Chicago Tapes Project. The tapes can be planted anywhere discreet yet public - inside newspaper boxes, planters, and tree trunks, under mailboxes, park benches and stoops, between the cracks in the walls and the pavement.

Artists’ Statement

Public space, especially in urban environments, rarely functions as such. In particular, our shared visual environment is often put up for sale to private interests through advertising, omnipresent in any urban area. There are few ways to avoid these constant consumerist messages except to hurry past with your head down. By doing this, we also fail to interact with our environment and our communities. Meanwhile, communities trying to reclaim public space, through projects like murals and community gardens, struggle for space and funds. Reclamation through graffiti brings up a host of other civic and aesthetic issues, but even the most beautifully rendered pieces are created more for the purpose of self-aggrandizement rather than fostering public dialogue. Tip the scale the other way, towards “clean” streets, and the public fares no better. The identical, featureless walls of gated communities, and exteriors neutralized by the dirt-brown and ash grey of graffiti busters offer little sense of place or positive identity.

The Chicago Tapes Project hopes to counter these alienating aspects of the city by encouraging free and active participation with the urban environment. Through creativity and interaction, citizens can make urban streets a place to appreciate. Autonomy is also a key element - participants can spread the project as far as they wish, select their level of anonymity, and how often they participate. The small physical scale of each tape station is a benefit in terms of geographic and temporal scope - tape stations are small enough, and are easy to establish and replace should they be erased. The intention of the Chicago Tapes Project is to foster a transformation of the way our society views its public spaces, through the facilitation an anti-capitalist, non-proprietary, public exchange of art, ideas, sounds, and music.