ASMR, a Sound Art : Experiences from Online Classes in Music and Multimedia

ASMR is short for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. Experienced by some people, it is a sensation that has been described as relaxing, shivering, and tingling. These attributes are reminiscent of sound-induced chills or 'frisson', a phenomenon investigated by researchers in music emotion psychology. The term also refers to a multifaceted subgenre of movies that may produce such sensations, and to a community of people who produce and consume such movies. The vast majority of ASMR movies are produced for online distribution by mainly young authors for their Internet-native audiences (Gallagher 2016). Many ASMR movies can be understood as a form of 'personalised theatre' that is transgressive, 'non-standard', often erotic, but not sexual. I argue that the strong emotions evoked by ASMR movies stem from the way in which actions are materialised through 'hyper-real' and saturated sonic and visual elements in these movies. The soundtrack typically exhibits an intense focus on foreground sonic events, resulting from the amplification of 'small sounds' and quasi-total elimination of background ambiences, and simultaneously, a careful attention to spatial effects, i.e. stereo panning and reverberation, enabled through recently increased availability of 'pro-sumer' audio recording equipment and software. These technical features promote a high degree of immersivity, if not realism, of the auditive experience, which is further underlined by a visual focus that 'explains' the actions heard in ASMR movies. This paper argues that the 'ASMR effect' is achieved in movies characterised by a loosely scripted performance within a setting of personalised theatre (Allen 2010) that amplifies materialising sound indices (Chion 1994). In this regard, what ASMR resembles most of all, as an artform, is performed sound art.