Some of us still vividly remember the evenings when a pencil came to the rescue of a cassette. The tape would unravel, and we would carefully wind it back, turning the pencil inside the cassette’s plastic shell. Then came the click of a button; the reels began to spin, and the room filled with music. That small rectangular object was introduced in 1963 in Berlin, at the Funkausstellung trade fair, when Philips launched the compact cassette. From that moment, music could fit into a pocket, and recordings of voices and radio shows became part of every household archive. Engineers at NASA even used modified tape cartridges on the Voyager probes as data storage devices. This may be why the cassette still carries a mythical aura. It belongs just as much in a child’s bedroom as it does in outer space. From there, it was a short step into the classroom or the living room, where a slide projector would light up the wall. The lamp turned on. The tray rotated, and a new frame appeared. Each change brought a brief darkness, followed by a quiet click. The Kodak Carousel, the most famous model, was discontinued in 2004 after decades of service in homes and schools. One of its most celebrated uses was in the lectures of American designer Charles Eames, who turned the Carousel into a tool for visual learning. Today, artists still use these projectors in installations, transforming the mechanical pause and fleeting darkness between slides into part of the artistic experience. On the shelves of many homes, there are still boxes filled with VHS tapes, each labelled by hand: “Summer ’92,” “First Birthday,” “New Year.” VCRs rolled off the production line for the last time in 2016, when Japan’s Funai, the final manufacturer, closed its factory. That same year, Sony discontinued Betamax cassettes, once the rival of VHS. Yet VHS tapes continue to attract a loyal community of collectors. Some titles fetch hundreds of dollars at auction, especially films that were never released on DVD or streaming platforms. In Pennsylvania, VHS Fest is held each year, with screenings, swaps, and conversations that revolve around these plastic boxes with magnetic hearts. And then there is the record: the act of sliding an album out of its sleeve, lowering the needle, and hearing the warm crackle before the music begins. In 2022, vinyl sales in the United States surpassed CDs for the first time in decades, with 41 million records sold compared to 33 million discs, according to the RIAA. Younger listeners discovered what older generations always knew: vinyl asks for attention, space, and time. Its grooves physically carry the sound, and the sleeve becomes an object to hold and display. Albums such as Taylor Swift’s Midnights turned into vinyl events, not only for the music but also for the experience of packaging and possession. Behind a red-lit door, time flows differently. A darkroom, quiet and heavy with the scent of chemicals, reveals an image on paper. In Berlin, LaborBerlin brings together artists who work with Super 8 and 16 mm film, offering workshops and residencies to preserve knowledge that might otherwise fade. In Marseille, similar laboratories welcome young photographers who are learning to develop film, while old cameras are repaired and returned to use. Analog photography has become a meeting ground for generations. Older photographers revisit skills they once knew, while younger ones discover rituals, they never had the chance to experience. On a wooden desk in a library or studio, the typewriter still plays like a small orchestra. Tap, tap, ding. Each sentence leaves a physical imprint on paper. In Milwaukee, QWERTYFEST is held every year, a festival dedicated to mechanical writing. There, the Boston Typewriter Orchestra performs music with typewriters as instruments. Alongside the concerts, there are workshops, fairs, and type-ins, where even children can feel the weight of the keys and watch words appear without a delete button to erase them. All of these scenes share the same sense of presence. Each of these objects (a cassette, a slide, a VHS tape, a record, a photograph born in the darkroom, or a sheet of paper struck by typebars) demands touch, attention, and patience. They are still here, waiting close by in drawers and archives, in museums and workshops, in the hands of artists and collectors. When they come alive again, they bring us back to a time when media were tangible, with their own scent, sound, and light. They stand near, just around the corner, ready for the next encounter that makes us smile and reminds us how beautiful it is when things carry weight and rhythm.
