ASMR – short for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response – is a physical sensation that has dominated a corner of the Internet for the best part of a decade. It has a dedicated following with over 14 million monthly searches on YouTube, and has launched a career where digital creators play ever-present ASMR-inducing content — soap-biting, mud-kneading and whispering, all come under it. Surprise style — hoping to find a loyal audience.
The exhibition at the Design Museum in London hopes to legitimize the often secret practice of ASMR. Credit: ed reeve
Now, a new exhibition at the Design Museum in London, “Weird Sensation Feels Good: The World of ASMR,” seeks to take this very private and digital practice into a public and physical space.
The exhibition space features a variety of signs, from visual cues and audio clips to interactive installations that combine sound with touch, each aimed at kickstarting a physical sensation in visitors.
As someone who has never sought out ASMR videos before, or felt particularly impressed when algorithms sent them anyway, my hopes of an immersive exhibition dedicated to triggering this elusive physical sensation fell short. She was A printed visitor’s guide containing several disclaimers, including a warning that “it’s not possible to feel anything” due to ASMR being “highly personal” reinforced my suspicions that I would leave the event cold. but I did not.
An interactive installation at the exhibit encouraged users to make their own ASMR-triggering sounds. Credit: ed reeve
It felt like ASMR tapas—small bite-sized introductions to various neurological activations until you found one you wanted to feast on. Abstract motion graphics, for example, although hypnotic in their infinite movements (a screen depicting an endless object being repeatedly separated from a Play-Doh Fun Factory machine) did not entertain me, let alone my mind. Let’s send in a deep calm.
Dusting a microphone with a toolkit of fluffy brushes while listening to playback, as an interactive installation instructed me, made me laugh—but only because I couldn’t imagine who had such an intermittent clout for something so mundane. There will be a reaction.
And then I entered the cerebral-looking conversation pit in the center of the room: an entirely off-white carpeted lounging area made of contoured tubular cushions that, when lying down, would seem to lean neatly over your head. Is. There I stood motionless, mesmerized by a video of a South Korean dog groomer meticulously grooming a white poodle. It completely calmed me down: the sound of water as a puppy was being shampooed in a cauvery chrome sink, the soft blowing noise of a hairdryer on his coat, the delicate clipping of crescent-shaped scissors; Carve the fur of this animal like a topiary. I can’t remember how long I stood there, that’s all, until the video ended and a stranger came and commented on my visual attractiveness.
The padded ASMR arena was built to mimic the privacy and comfort of a bedroom space. Credit: ed reeve
“It’s a bit like you’re in amniotic fluid, isn’t it?” Curator James Taylor-Foster said outside Brain-Pit. “Our main goal,” explained the architect behind the show’s design, Dagnija Smilga, “was to create a public space where you feel safe, protected and calm. So we used this round shape and these arms that hug you “
The winding pit includes a handful of nooks and crannies where visitors can drown without stopping. “Half the work in the arena, you can watch on YouTube,” Taylor-Foster said. “So this exhibition is doing something else. It is inviting you to understand these works in a different context, in a shared setting. And to understand it as part of a series of broader discourses.”
“The point of making an exhibition about it is to say, ‘No, it’s not weird. Not in a negative sense,'” he said. “It’s really a part of the fabric of our lives. And by [putting on an exhibition] In a museum, we’re legitimizing it.”
“Weird Sensation Feels Good: The World of ASMR” is open at the Design Museum in London from May 13 to October 16, 2022.