How can Art become a Multisensory experience through ASMR?
Have you ever been in a library where Two people behind you are whispering, some people are gently typing away on their keyboards and someone starts turning pages in a book slowly but gently. Do you ever hear these sounds and start to feel relaxed or get a pleasurable sense of tightening sensation on your scalp? For many people experiencing these sounds may be frustrating distractions in an environment where theyre trying to focus on getting work done. But for a certain few, these sights and sounds trigger a feeling which is known as Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) — a warm, tingling and pleasant sensation starting at the crown of the head and spreading down the body.
I’ve always been amazed by the device of asmr. As someone who experiences high levels of stress, I find asmr to be both a calming pleasurable device of self-care. I can’t always afford massages as much as I need them, so I find asmr something that helps me cope with the daily stresses of life. Asmr is a bit of an enigma to people especially to people who study psychology. I also discovered one asmr artist who is also a psychologist, psychotherapist and hypnotherapist.
She calls herself the ASMR Psychologist and she conducts her own psychological research of asmr through her channel, creating asmr videos and relies on feedback from her subscribers to further her development of research. Many take the liberty of considering themselves asmr artists and there have been two asmr artists who really did seem to delve into asmr as a serious art form.
One asmrtist called Ephemeral Rift made a video where he changed the perspective of the video work. It reminded me of the movie Being John Malkovich. Another artist whom I worked closely with in a class exhibition made a video work critiquing asmr videos and how some people find them irritating and creepy. By this measure asmr gains artistic value through its subjectivity. Although there is commodification involved in asmr it could be further explored as an artistic device because if it’s mysterious ability to achieve touch through sound. For those who experience asmr sometimes when you listen to it, you can get tingles on the back of your head that can feel like someone is giving you a head massage. Still to this day no-one has been able to explain why or how someone can experience asmr but its enigmatic nature is something so many disciplines can explore not just art and psychology.
Studies have shown that ASMR is not experienced by everyone. With sounds that trigger Misophonia in others but those same sounds create comfort among the ASMR community, scientists are intrigued at how only some can experience ASMR while others are angered or creeped out by it. For those that do experience ASMR there are physiological responses that they get such as their heart rate slows and their skin electrical responses change (goosebumps) but is triggered by a psychological state of comfort or calmness. For scientists find this phenomenon is very difficult to study as they can’t induce an asmr response in a test subject in an MRI machine.
Historically speaking inclusivity of all the senses in art has a history. Alain Corbin’s writings on the ‘sensible’ roughly translate to “the sensate” or “the perceptible.” Corbin’s book The Foul and the Fragrant explored social aspects of smell. A British Historian, Roy Porter revered Corbin’s work and was working on a book called Working on Flesh in the Age of Reason. This book particularly focused on the role of the body in relation to spirituality and the self whilst another influential text Sweetness and Power by Anthropologist Sydney Mintz focused on taste in reference to the sugar industry and how it was initially marketed as something positive whilst it employed slave labour and eventually proved to be a health risk. This trade was not eased at all as capitalism thrived on this trade and continues to today. In America the development of historical accounts of the senses was shaped by many academics through many academic texts over the last 40 years. Many can theorize and speculate about all the senses but yet ASMR is still a fairly new area of research and has only started to be documented thoroughly through the rise of ASMR’s digital perfomality.
Ondine Manfrin created a video performance work in an exhibition her and I curated and participated in in 2018 called Discharge. In the official exhibition flyer it describes The exhibition ‘Discharge’ as follows: ‘Discharge’ explores the fabrication of human existence in a manner that resonates with nails scratching across a chalkboard. Through it, disruptive audio will ooze into the untouched mind and create migraines, sculptured anxiety will become an accessible vicarious experience and environmental waste will leave a mark on your soul nearly as big as your ecological footprint. The mind will drown in a plethora of blunt, uncomfortable truth.
In Ondine’s performance work she used ASMR as a tool in her work to make people feel uncomfortable. Her slant on ASMR being sarcastically consoling her viewers comments on how her experience of ASMR was a more condescending concept to her and did nothing to help alleviate her anxiety.
This is not uncommon for a self-help trend as I personally find colouring in a condescending concept to me especially because I am a professional artist. I found a live performance work she did on this same concept called Ondine Manfrin ASMR: ULTRAVIRUS which can be found on YouTube. Critiquing ASMR specifically as a money-making trend makes sense as it is a strange phenomenon even to those that experience it but how can ASMR harness a multisensory experience through art?
I have found some parallels between some sound artists and that of ASMR audio triggers. Cevdet Erek is a sound artist who studied sound engineering and Architecture. His practice combines video, sound and images in an attempt to alter the viewers perception and experience in a given space.
Cevdet Erek, SSS-Shore Scene Soundtrack. Gentle Whispering ASMR, Relaxing Fluffy Towel Folds.
In his work SSS-Shore Scene Soundtrack, Cevdet plays with carpet sounds which is very reminiscent of Gentle Whispering ASMR’s Relaxing Fluffy Towel Folds video.
The second sound artist I found is Susan Philipsz who is a Scottish artist in Berlin who works with spaces, narrative and sounds. Her work is very site specific, working with public spaces. Her work Lowlands won the Turner Art Prize and is reminiscent of the soft singing trigger displayed in Frivolous Fox ASMR’s Sea Shanties video.
With these comparisons it’s clear that some sound artists may be unknowingly triggering ASMR in their audiences or at least a sense of deep relaxation.
Presently ASMR has been entering its commercialisation phase as it has been used in advertisements and some ASMRtists promote products in their videos if they get a video of theirs sponsored by a company. This opens up ASMR to be critiqued and used satirically in art. In the Sydney morning Herald Nato Thompson who is the artistic director of the nomadic non-profit Philadelphia Contemporary got introduced to an ASMR video of a woman pressing her face into slices of bread. As someone who has seen plenty of edgy video installations in gallery settings, he thought this strange asmr video was quite close to art. After watching many of these strange bread asmr videos he founded the ASMR Film Festival. The festival has become a juried show open to regional teenagers and judged by three grown up ASMR stars including the Bread Face ASMRtist that inspired the entire festival. The Bread Faced ASMR Artist has been compared to Performance Artist Karen Finley. Karen Finley is well known for her performance pieces where she submerges her body in foods such as honey and chocolate. Whereas Slime ASMRtists have been likened to Matthew Barnes documentary piece On Using Plastics and Petroleum Jelly. Matthew Barnes is an artist well known for his Drawing Restraint series and for his relationship with singer and artist Bjork. Bjork created an album of Music for Matthew Barnes alternative movie Drawing Restraint 9 which they both stared in. This soundtrack is very experimental as far as sound works and music goes.
Claire Tolan’s fortnightly radio show “You’re worth it.” is dedicated to ASMR by way of feminised voices. In her exploration of ASMR in this show she explores how feminised arts practise are also considered feminist. She explores soft feminised sounds in different spaces, further critiquing and exploring the ASMR experience. ASMR video’s have been referred to as ‘Digital Intimacy’ by Tasha Bjelic and a ‘Coping mechanism within our late capitalist condition’ These intimacies are materialised into whispered voices which is a medium not commonly explored in art. Claire’s voice further calls into question notions of power and the individualised voice. As a contrast to yelling, amplified voices and public speaking, a whispered voice carries a different sense of power with it. Whispered voices draw you in, in a different way. Amplified voices are so common and overused that they become easy to ignore but a whispered voice is more intriguing in a world cluttered with loud noises. ASMR is also a medium that explores notions of presence, with use of binaural microphones and 3Dio microphones; the voice of an asmrtist permeates our senses in more intimate ways. The sensory distance is removed even though physical is present through the digitised experience. Claire Tolan tries to challenge gender norms with her ASMR experience and notes that Judith Butler and Donna Haraway are her influences. She says, “I play with the feminised role until it becomes a caricature of femininity, a ‘creepy priestess.’” In this sense she disrupts gendered notions of care in a playful manner whilst still respecting the work of care present in ASMR practises.
In Conclusion it is evident to see here that ASMR can become a powerful device to use when creating art in a multisensory way. Whisperlodge in New York city is one ultimate culmination of this phenomenon. Whisperlodge is a physical ASMR clinic where people can go to experience ASMR outside of the digital community. They can experience touch, smell, sound and visuals in a more physical sense but when you look at their website it bears a resemblance to live performance art visuals. Whisperlodge became so well known that they recently appeared on a Buzzfeed Netflix series called Follow This. In their featured episode of Follow This the journalist who hosts the episode takes part in the physical ASMR experience but later explains that her physical experience required her to be more vulnerable and open than she was comfortable with which makes this performative experience synonymous with Marina Abramovic’s The Artist is Present. Although ASMR hasn’t been explored as much through art there can be indirect uses of ASMR techniques much like what I found with Cevdet Erek and Susan Phillipsz’ works. It’s important to rethink new ways we can create art experiences that are more thorough and transformative.
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