https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6011-7329
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Abstract
Over the past decade, the viral circulation of the acronym ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) has brought a new sensation and audiovisual genre to the attention of the internet-connected world. This phenomenon has attracted the interest of contemporary music composers, who have begun using the term ASMR as a shorthand for a broader theoretical category that involves the assemblage of a specific sound quality, its aisthesis, and a range of compositional, performance, and recording techniques through which they are manipulated. Based on interviews with eight living composers (Carola Bauckholt, Chaya Czernowin, Andrew Harlan, Ole Hübner, Neo Hülcker, Allan Gravgaard Madsen, Morten Riis, and Charlie Sdraulig), I argue that the term ASMR is used as a shorthand to invoke the ‘intimate zone’. As one of the four zones of human interaction formalised by anthropologist Edward T. Hall in his theory of proxemics, the intimate zone emerges from the ways in which space, the sensorium, and one’s sense of self mould each other. After deconstructing the nature of ASMR as an autonomous galvanic response, and combining the framework of proxemics with that of ‘cultural techniques’, I articulate the ways in which the composers use the term ASMR to speak about features of past contemporary art music as well as their current work. I then describe the strategies employed in their compositions to engage the intimate zone and divide them into two main categories. The first involves calibrating the perceived proximity of the audience to the sound object, while the second involves manipulating the space in which this interaction occurs.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the innumerable number of people who in the past few years have indulged my interest in ASMR, and to Valerio Sbravatti and Maurizio Azzan in particular for our stimulating conversations. I also want to thank the reviewers of this journal for their generous comments, and Elaine Fitz Gibbon, Megan Steigerwald Ille, and Daniel Walden for their valuable suggestions on the final draft of this article.
Notes
2 Czernowin’s Facebook page was hacked during summer 2021, and so the original post cannot be retrieved. The screenshot was taken by the author of this article shortly after its posting.
4 https://www.steadyhealth.com/topics/weird-sensation-feels-good. The thread continues on https://www.steadyhealth.com/topics/weird-sensation-feels-good-part-2.
5 Many audiovisuals examples followed, all characterised by a similar intimate atmosphere, both visually and aurally. Users claim they are triggered by TV evangelists telling stories from the Bible, art TV shows like ‘Take Hart’ and ‘Art Attack’, or cooking shows. The first hyperlinked YouTube video features someone memorising the orientation of a Rubik’s cube and solving it, followed by make-up tutorials and other DIY YouTube contents. Among these hyperlinked videos, the only one still available was uploaded by YouTuber Eily311, in which she demonstrates eyebrow threading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVmbHB2p4WM.
7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASMR. For a survey of ASMR as audiovisual genre see Gallagher (Citation2016) and Harper (Citation2020).
8 I make use of the archaic spelling aisthesis in order to highlight the Greek root of the word, meaning ‘sensation’ or ‘perception’, and differentiate it from the philosophy of art promoted by Alexander Baumgarten. The latter, through Immanuel Kant, became synonymous with the ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’ from Kant’s Critique of Judgment (Rehding Citation2021).
10 For an excellent review of the current literature on affect theory and its relation to music discourse see Grant (Citation2020).
11 Etymologically, the word ‘intimate’ comes from the Latin intimus ‘inmost, deepest, profound’ (adj.). It has first and foremost a ‘spatial’ connotation. However, it is also often used ‘figuratively’ in reference to ‘inmost thoughts or feelings’. See Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Online, s.v. ‘intimate, adj. and n.’, last modified September 2021, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/98506.
16 Both Hübner and Hülcker use the nonbinary pronouns they/them.
17 Personal communication (26 August 2021).
21 Personal communication (28 August 2021).
22 I say ‘in hindsight’ because I am not assuming that there was any deliberate intention on the part of composers to break from serialism and stable tones.
23 The comment appears in the program notes to the premiere at Donaueschinger Musiktage of her piece Implicit Knowledge: https://docplayer.org/197045060-Donau-donaueschinger-musiktage-eschin-ger-musiktage.html.
24 Personal communication (30 August 2021).
25 Personal communication (31 August 2021).
26 Personal communication (12 September 2021).
27 Personal communication (25 August 2021).
28 Riis asserts ‘The basic technology of the microphone hasn’t changed. The biggest difference is that everyone has access to these recording and amplifying gears, there’s a sort of democratisation of the accessibility of these media’. His perspective connects to Attali’s ideas about how new ways of making music, which he calls ‘composition’, can help us escape the regime of mere reproduction (Citation1985, 133).
29 Personal communication (1 September 2021).
31 Whether or not this was an intentional homage to John Cage’s Branches, this passage points towards how one might re-interpret compositional passages from the historical avant-garde in light of the ASMR genre.
32 ‘Det handler om langsommelighed og om at skabe øget opmærksomhed på hvordan vi kan føle os tilstede i os selv’. https://458.dk/asmr-musik/.
34 Personal communication (6 September 2021).
35 Personal communication (10 September 2021).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Giulia Accornero
Giulia Accornero is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Harvard University with a secondary field in Medieval Studies. She was a Graduate Fellow at The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti in Spring 2020. While her primary research focuses on the medieval theorisation and notation of rhythm in Islamicate and Christianate sources, she also writes about music, sound, and media from the twentieth century through today. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Sound Stage Screen (2021), and she has a chapter in the volume Material Cultures of Music Notation (Routledge, 2022). In 2013, she founded the Milan-based contemporary music series Sound of Wander.