ASMR and Sound

*Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response – a pleasant sensation of tingling over the scalp and neck that can be elicited through visual or aural stimulation of quiet and whispered sounds 

ASMR and sound allow experimentation with the conditions, oppressions and experience of women and marginalised genders and uses them as a starting point for imagining an interior narration.

Drawing inspiration from Donna Haraway, Lola Olufemi and Legacy Russell, my ASMR works seek to create a space where the peculiar conditions of women’s lived experiences can hold necessary contradictions alongside one another, particularly when enfolded into installation.

The whispered soundtrack and visual accompaniment is a disembodied representation of the contradictory ideas and projections that collide in the social expectations of the “female” gender. Care and emotional labour are extended to the audience in a sincere parody of ASMR personal attention, delivered in intimate whispered bursts.

Is it strange? 2022, 13m 30s

Script

Is it strange? Do you find it hard to experience this?

Are you too connected to this, not connected enough, is your mind somewhere else? Are you trying to find a solution? 

I’ll just gently stroke your forehead, so lightly, with the tips of my fingers… Shhhhh…Close your eyes, I’ll sit with you. Some gentle company. I’ll whisper to you. Tell you some secrets.

Let’s visualise a place we can go, a new place. I’ll talk you through it, imagine it with me.

All around you is a soft pink light, it’s shifting ever so slightly, like a breathing creature, and you’re inside it. Pulsating softly, shifting seductively. You move forward.

Just a soft moment, a quiet thought…what were you expecting? That your mind would just empty and you’d go somewhere else? Should I tell myself? Are you?

*Giggle*

Can we leave it all behind? The weight of it all? Should we leave it all or should it consume us? Should I tell myself I’m a good person? Are you? Are you? *giggle* ARE YOU? Am I?

Everything is breathing, it moves in time with the breath, a contraction, a pulse, a variation in air that sighs past you, bringing clouds of soft mist, fragrant with an undertow of something you can’t place, a strange smell, evocative, but shifting into something with an edge.

Light breath on the base of your neck, moving the tiny hairs, raising them in goose bumps. You aren’t scared, but you still, pulse picking up. Reaching out with every sense available to you, inhabiting every molecule of your body, all of you alert to this one sensation.

All of you is humming, vibrating, softly, crescendo’s building in your neck as you shiver. You turn and find you are alone. The floor is warming, it gives to your touch, soft resistance, viscous. Fluid, almost.

Repetitive synthesis gradually eases into your consciousness, a low vibration, a chambered beat. Slow, echoing. Insistent. Reverberating as it rises around you.

What were you expecting? It wasn’t this. It would never be this. Where is your autonomy now?

Do you crave the objective? Would you shun the depth of this? Or are you surrendering to it, to colour and sound and softness……fluidity…Ambiguity…Uncertainty…

Are you too connected to this? Not connected enough, is your mind somewhere else? Are you trying to find a solution?

Your nerve endings are alive, humming. The slow breathing, your slow breathing, this soft light that intrudes even when your eyes are closed, as if your lids no longer perform their function, no more boundaries between this internal place and your external body. You reach for comparable experiences, memories, images, imaginings. Do you find them? Are there any?

Lost in thoughts about these comparisons your awareness shifts, the intensity is diminishing. You reach for it, unsure if you want to remain in this space, but not ready for it to end. Despite this you sense yourself coming to, shifting from this sensory state back to awareness and presence, sentience.

It’s hard to experience this, harder to stop…

Are you alone? Are you ever not alone?

I’ll sit with you for a while…

Sinking into… 2021, 17m 41s

Script

Hi. Welcome. *Giggle*

Thank you for joining me *Giggle*

It’s OK for you to just relax, to close your eyes if you feel comfortable, rest your weight in the chair a little more fully.

Before we get started, I wanted to check in on how you are doing, what’s been on your mind lately? How have you been feeling? You can let yourself feel that here, or set it aside if you want.

I’m going to begin with some gentle, soft whispering and some quiet noises to help you relax. *Giggle*

You’ve had a lot going on, and you can rest now with some calming personal attention.

Gentle, gentle, gentle, gentle.

I’ll start by just gently brushing your hair…brush, brush, brushing, brush…just gentle. Just gentle. Brush, brush. *Giggle*

You have such beautiful hair, such a lovely texture. I’ll be careful not to pull, just a gentle brush.

Sinking into, in between and through, slipping into and out of alignment. Traversing the boundaries between the felt and seen, known and undiscovered. Bodily contradictions, synthetic and organic, intertwined, symbiotic, cybernetic: in tension together.

Necessary conflicts breed generative complexities. Reclaiming the unused, the forbidden, the insistent. We clasp these together, in suspension. Never quite giving each the attention it deserves. Possible expansions, infinite potentials, carefully constructed on the ruins of past ideological inflictions.

Is it too much?

Can it ever be enough?

Sliding into the in between spaces, negotiating their margins, fluid, expanding and contracting, filling, overflowing, spilling. Undefinable, unknowable, unquantifiable, wholly subjective.

Emotive and perceived but unseen. Strategic coalitions collapse into alternate priorities, new urgencies.