THE JOURNAL
ASMR Arena, “Weird Sensations Feel Good: The World Of ASMR” at the Design Museum, London, 2022. Photograph by Mr Ed Reeve
“The term ASMR was coined about a decade ago, but ASMR itself is much older,” says curator Mr James Taylor-Foster. “It taps in to our sincere human need for softness and closeness and gentleness and security. And what ASMR is telling us, I think, right now – the fact that it even exists – is that something is missing. It’s filling a gap. And it’s interesting to think what that gap might be.”
I’m sitting with Taylor-Foster on a 1km-long “sausage pillow” that is closely curled into an arena-like amorphous cocoon in the middle of the Design Museum in London. It is the private view of an anarchic exhibition, Weird Sensation Feels Good, which aims to introduce visitors to and expand their understanding of autonomous sensorial meridian response (ASMR), a term coined by the ASMRtist Ms Jennifer Allen.
ASMR blew up the internet a decade ago after a message board entitled “Weird Sensation Feels Good” attempted to describe how it felt. Wikipedia describes the sensation as “a tingling sensation that usually begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine... commonly triggered by auditory or visual stimuli.” Despite its popularity on social media, and in the visual arts and advertising, there has been surprisingly little academic research done into the phenomenon. But ASMR triggers such as soft whispering, brushing microphones, infinite loops and gentle painting are now being re-evaluated as tools for improving mental health.
“We know anecdotally that ASMR is really important for people as a form of self-medication for anxiety, insomnia and loneliness,” says Taylor-Foster. “I’m pretty confident that at some point it could be a complementary form of therapy. We’re coming to understand that our brains and our bodies are not two separate things, that we are these fairly squishy beings moving through a fairly sharp world. ASMR speaks to the desire for softness and intimacy.”
“We’re coming to understand that our brains and our bodies are not two separate things, that we are these fairly squishy beings moving through a fairly sharp world. ASMR speaks to the desire for softness and intimacy”
The exhibition has 50 works that Taylor-Foster describes as intentional (an animatronic human tongue by Mr Tobias Bradford that undulates towards the viewer) and unintentional (Mr Bob Ross painting videos from the 1990s) and all the works offer opportunities for the viewer to feel an ASMR response in whatever way that happens for them.
Although research is now being undertaken into why ASMR triggers the brain in the way it does, Taylor-Foster James acknowledges that everyone’s response is unique (for him, it’s a deep state of relaxation, almost trancelike, with an intense feeling of champagne bubbles popping on the top of his scalp and flowing down his neck, spine and arms) and part of the motivation for bringing ASMR into a public, shared space such as a museum is to try and better understand how that response is affected by our proximity to other people.
“I think ASMR has become a really important lifeline for some people in one of the most intense periods of many people’s lives,” says Taylor-Foster. “Especially when it comes to mental health and isolation, solitude, loneliness, I think that the past decade has seen a certain kind of inflammation in the world of technology, our proximity to world events, our proximity to information, to entertainment. ASMR has carved out a niche for slowness, and for calmness, and for gentleness.
“What you have here [in the museum] is those individual experiences within a collective. The best compliment for me would be that when you leave the museum you might hear the birds sing for the first time in a while. You might have just reacquainted yourself with a certain amount of close listening, close seeing and close feeling, which is the entire intention of ASMR.”
