How's this for a far-out recycling concept: Remember the box of audio cassette tapes you stashed in the attic, oh, about a decade ago? How ‘bout converting that entire highschool music library into fabric that can be used for clothing, messenger bags, prayer flags, you name it. So-called Sonic Fabric is a textile made from repurposed audio cassettes.

Not only is it richly textured, durable, washable, and eco-friendly, it's also audible. Sweep a special device over the fabric, and you can hear the fusion of sounds from the woven strands of tape. Invented by artist Alyce Santoro, Sonic Fabric was inspired by her childdhood adventures racing small sailboats with her father. He used strands of cassette tape for the skiff’s “tell-tales”— indicators of wind direction.

“When I was a kid I used to imagine that I could hear Cat Stevens or Beethoven’s 6th or whatever had been recorded onto the tape wafting out into the air if the wind hit the tell-tail just the right way,” writes Alyce. ”Years later, I learned about Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags. Colorful squares of fabric silkscreened with mantras are hung outdoors in auspicious locations where their blessings can be activated and sent off into the world on the wind. It seemed a natural progression to me to combine these two concepts to create a fabric with sounds I considered sacred woven into it.”

Image credit: Sonicfabric.com