Following the recent pause of the entire world, "ASMR gifts" is a reflection on the conversations and narratives that appeared while being isolated. The moment was ambiguous for both of us, as well as for everybody else. Suddenly it felt like all personal problems needed a re-assessment; their importance changed. In this time of global uncertainty, different narratives appeared on social media imposing either self-reflection and positive thinking or the opposite; hyper-productivity. This reflected in our daily conversations, those also changed.

We realized that our phone calls and chats turned into a therapy session where we could let go of our worries. This routine of exchanging and talking about feelings led us to an idea to go further and search a different way to give each other a moment of tranquillity.

ASMR gifts a project that explores ASMR [1] as an artistic and therapeutic medium, which allows us to sense and discover another person's environment and feelings. The idea was to record ASMR triggers that we would find in our surroundings and send those recordings to each other as a gift to relax. As a result, we turned this conversation into a sound narrative that exposes our state of mind through the sound of our environment.

Below you can find our first audio composition based on recordings made April and May. This is the first piece of a series of ASMR gifts. We plan to continue capturing ASMR triggers in our daily environment and share them with each other. The goal is to create multiple audio compositions that will change depending on our inner conditions in relation to external surroundings and situations. 

[1]  ASMR refers to a pleasant tingling feeling that a person experiences when he/she hears soothing sounds like scratching and tapping, brushing and whispering.

[2]  An ASMR trigger is any stimuli that elicit an Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response in your brain.

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Sasha Smirnova