Whispering, Blowing, Crinkling, Tapping

ASMR, which is short for autonomous sensory meridian response, is a pleasurable, often tingly sensation of “euphoria, relaxation or well-being” (Steckelberg et al.). The cause or trigger of the state varies from person to person and not everyone feels it. Things that can cause ASMR are specific sensory sensations; the list is plentiful and includes sounds of whispering, blowing, crinkling, tapping, sticky fingers, ticking or dripping. Social media is overflowing with ASMR content; videos of accentuated sounds racking up millions of views. These clips might show hands turning pages of a book, licking their fingers, or perhaps tapping on the surface of sticky candy. But ASMR isn’t limited to sound; in fact, every sense can trigger the euphoric feeling in your body. It could be a light touch, hair play, eye contact, a specific scent, a certain colour or dappled sun light (Sharkey, 2019).

While not everyone experiences the full sensations of ASMR, the moments themselves are often enough to pull us out of our automated processing. They provide a distraction or attraction that disrupts the status quo. In a sense, these moments of delight interrupt the banal to help us attune to the space and the present moment. At the heart of this exploration lies the notion that sensory awareness is an opportunity to deepen our connection between ourselves and our environment. When we are invited to break free of the automated attention of a bleak environment—to engage with the world in a deliberate and immersive manner—the stimulation and entertainment is unsurprisingly pleasurable.

Engaging others’ sensory awareness is becoming a skill and in some cases an art form where the practice of directing sensations to unfold in the present moment becomes a performance. Installation art emerges as the perfect medium for this sensorial exploration. One project, by artists Melinda Lauw and Sndrew Hoepfner, draws from ASMR techniques to create a fully immersive spa experience. Their website describes the project as a “sensory journey through live asmr” (www.whisperlodge.nyc). Titled The Whisper Lodge, the journey is an installation project guiding participants through sensuous rooms with intimate and experiential sensory performances. The lodge envelops participants in a tapestry of sights, sounds, and textures by acting as a sanctuary for sensation; a haven where the gentle cadence of whispered conversations and the tender touch of sensory exploration converge.

In an article for The Atlantic, Julie Beck (who experienced the lodge firsthand) describes the intimate nature of the sounds, all of which “are uniformly quiet, and close. It’s a feeling that comes from intimacy, from proximity” (2017). In the hushed spaces of this immersive performance, participants can find solace in the simplicity of sensory connection. However, it challenges the passive role of the observer, urging active participation through embodiment. As Beck describes, she is “supposed to be small and quiet and vulnerable now, to exist in subtle shades instead of broad strokes”. We can imagine the challenge presented by the space, how difficult it is to slow down and focus, and in some cases to take seriously. Spending the afternoon at a spa where people whisper in your ear or weave fingers through your hair, could seem strange. It may be part of the reason that ASMR remains a niche trend. However, its popularity and momentum point to a larger movement aimed at reconnecting with our bodies in their environment.

A Call to Action Attention

As it has been explored through ASMR, this reconnection requires the development of sensory awareness and attuning ourselves to the environment. Artists have long been part of a movement aimed at fostering deeper attention and responsiveness through their practice, performances, and work. Art frequently acts as a catalyst for introspection, encouraging shifts in perspective and offering fresh insights into everyday existence. In his work Relational Aesthetics, Nicolas Bourriaud (2002) highlights the potential for dialogue “even when inert forms are involved” (p.16). It is through this conversation and participation, he says, that “I see and perceive, I comment, and I evolve in a unique space and time” (p.16). Bourriaud delves into the interconnected and reciprocal relationship between art and its audience (or its participants), emphasizing how the act of encountering art becomes an interactive and dynamic exchange, blurring the lines between observer and artwork.

The work of Janet Cardiff, renowned for her immersive installations, challenges the boundaries of art and environment. While some of her creations feature intricate sets paired with elaborate narratives, others subtly challenge existing environments to disrupt viewers' routines and perceptions. Take, for instance, her site-specific audio walks, which lead participants through urban landscapes worldwide, accompanied by precisely timed soundtracks. Are those birds chirping from the trees or emanating from my headphones? Did someone just call out to me? These walks, purposefully unsettling, challenge and distort our reality, resulting in a magical reinterpretation of the city street. By using intentionally disconcerting experiences, Cardiff prompts us to question and re-evaluate our surroundings, transforming the mundane into something uncertain, where everything—and nothing—is as it seems.

As Jenny Odell (2019) aptly observes, "nothing is so simultaneously familiar and alien as that which has been present all along" (p.48). Cardiff's work underscores how our senses can deceive us when our perceptions of reality are influenced by preconceived notions. In crafting an audio walk for London's historically significant East End, Cardiff seamlessly blends sounds from past events like the Brick Lane bombing, IRA-related incidents, and the Second World War Blitz with present-day noises. Describing this immersive experience, Cardiff vividly depicts streets reverberating with the echoes of bombings, sirens, helicopters, and frantic footsteps, blurring the boundaries between past and present, certainty and illusion, to create an entirely immersive and embodied encounter.

In Cardiff's view, individuals with heightened openness and awareness are akin to "talented viewers," capable of fostering greater synchronicity (Messer, 2006, p.45). These individuals possess a unique ability to perceive and respond to the world with heightened clarity and vibrancy, noticing nuances that often elude others. Barry Blesser and Linda Salter (2007) speak to this sensitivity as it applies to the nuances of sound, which they suggest vary between the purely physical sensation of hearing, detecting vibrations in the air with our eardrums, to more “emotionally engaged listening”, which creates a “visceral response, a heightened arousal” in our minds and bodies (pp. 12-13). When engulfed by emotional listening, you may “burst into tears of sadness or feel overwhelmed with aesthetic pleasure” (p.13). This type of relational sound shifts the notion of hearing to something more active and resonant.

Can this refined and detailed sensibility be learned to allow greater and more enriched perception of the world?

Cultivating the Senses

In her book A Sensory Education, Anna Harris connects the way in which our senses have been cultivated (as learned practices, repeated activities, or material encounters) and “how the world takes shape” (2021, p.197). Our personal and cultural sensory predisposition may shape our perception of how a particular moment appears, but it also, in a more active manner, gives form to experience. These qualities may be pre-conditioned and cultural (Howes, 2005), but ways in which we listen, observe, and participate in the world can also be developed and practiced. How we attend to our body and environment—if we take time to notice and connect to our surroundings—can reveal “possibilities that would otherwise be obscured” (Odell, 2021, p.48). These practices of presence and attention take place at both conscious and unconscious levels. At times these exercises may require repeated observation and study (such as olfactory training), while others rely on deepening awareness to increase knowledge.

To make things more interesting, King & Janiszewski (2011) argue that our perspective on our environment—our reading of these haptic signals—shifts depending on mood. Called affect-gating, this theory suggests that our experience of the environment changes with our emotional state. Not only do we perceive the world differently, but we crave different sensations. For example, some people become more sensitive to tactile stimulation when in a negative-affective state, but more open to visual information in a positive-affective state (King & Janiszewski, 2011). The “eyes, hands, ears, mouth, and nose do not simply compute the world” rationally (Trigg, 2012, p.13); they feel and absorb it emotionally. Suddenly, tactile, and visual information take on transient and emotive qualities. Rather than consider physical traits as objective qualities (e.g., wood looks and feels more pleasurable than plastic), they should be considered as part of a person’s “affective state” (King & Janiszewski, 2011, p.699). This affective lens allows us to understand how different temperaments may influence our own, and others’, environmental experiences.

Certain emotional states may also serve different purposes: for example, the positive-affective state for visual sensitivity, which allows for types of creative work that demand heightened visual openness and exploration, could make sitting still while wrapped in a cozy blanket feel almost claustrophobic. A once-tempting indulgence of soft, velvety pillows loses its power. On the other hand, those in a negative-affective state might walk into a warm room with soft, glowing lights and a crackling fireplace and instantly feel comforted. Moving through these environments, cold to warm, dark to light, hard to soft, the mind-body receives an array of affective signals that may or may not be in alignment with your needs. Thinking back to the rise of ASMR, the preference for certain sensory stimulus may also be linked to a person’s particular emotional state.

Potential Space

As we consider the desire to make connections between our bodies and their environment, an often-overlooked aspect of this relationship in the concept of “potential.” Potential could be thought of as the possibility of change in an environment, which brings to mind modular and moveable furniture, but it can also be considered in terms of wonder and curiosity. In an exploratory paper on design, Stewart Clegg and Martin Kornberger (2006) draw on Rem Koolhaas (1995) to explore architecture as the “staging of uncertainty, the seeding of potential, [and] the creation of enabling fields” among other delightful attributes (p. 157). Seen through these virtues, the presence of undefined space offers room for possibility, creative exploration, and collaboration. When the way forward is left open, previously unseen paths may emerge. Just as empty lots are converted into community gardens and alleyways become emergent playgrounds, unplanned or “unused, unbuilt and empty” spaces can become an invitation for almost anything (p. 156). In the unknown, there is risk and potential. When designing spaces, rather than designate each space with a concrete function, Clegg and Kornberger advocate, like Koolhaas, for “void spaces” where “excess capacity provides flexibility” (p. 156). These unfinished spaces shift responsibility to those who dwell within them, thereby creating tailored structures of support and functionality—characteristics important for connection, and wellbeing. These qualities invite participation and investment. Spaces must be able to shift and evolve with the needs of those using them, and this quality is especially important in delineating the difference between a supportive, adaptable space and the kind of impermeable space to which there is no relationship.

As with potential, qualities of mystery and unknown also have a dramatic impact on how space is perceived. The following section is a short extract from my book How to Work with Space (Messer, 2024) that explores the use of light and shadow on how we engage with space. The excerpt is reproduced with permission from the publisher, Palgrave Macmillian.

Curious Shadows

The presence of potential can also be linked to emotions such as optimism, curiosity, and hope, among many others. But why does it feel difficult to justify the need for curiosity in space? In organizational studies, how often do we evaluate a space based on its ability to provoke intrigue? Richard Phillips (2013) suggests that we need to actively “make space for curiosity” in everyday work environments (p. 493). Spaces can be embedded with curiosity through objects of interest, or qualities of the space itself. Throughout his work In Praise of Shadows, Junichirō Tanizaki (1977) meticulously describes the settings and qualities of Japanese architecture, design, and ritual, often contrasting them with Western aesthetic and cultural norms. His words lead us into a room that is empty yet overflows with detail and mystery:

I marvel at our [Japanese] comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into it forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway (p.20).

Here Tanizaki illustrates the beauty and power held within “the secrets of shadows” by emphasizing their almost mystical qualities (p.20). We cannot help but be affected at a subconscious level, for what we are witnessing is not a gimmick or device, but the dynamic interplay between the built and natural environments.

While lighting is often spoken about in design, how shadows appear on the wall has received less attention. It is fascinating to watch how they constantly shift and change depending on the direction of light and the placement of the sun or moon in the sky. It is one of the exciting things about being in a new space—seeing the shadows for the first time. It is not something you can always predict, which almost makes it a mystery. I recently placed a crystal on a high windowsill to catch the afternoon light streaming in. Instantly, the house was covered in dozens of rainbows gliding, ever so slowly, along the wall, the subtle retreat of the sun now reflected in luminescent colour.

The presence of curiosity naturally provokes mystery and inquiry, as we attempt to make sense of the unknown. For Maggie MacLure (2013) these liminal moments represent a “threshold between knowing and unknowing, that prevents wonder from being wholly contained or recuperated as knowledge, and thus affords an opening onto the new” (p.228). Just like seeing shapes in cloudy skies, our imaginations are activated through connections and encounters with the undefined. In this sense, curiosity becomes an essential quality of seeing anew.

Conclusion

Taking the time to invest in sensory stimulation is akin to activating our environments. Whether that means playing video games that draw attention to soundscapes, visiting a sensory spa, participating in site-specific audio-walk, or walking through purposefully stimulating architecture. These activities are part of a sensory education that builds awareness and connection between our bodies and their environment. This more attuned way of being with our surroundings creates a sensitive and rich landscape that can push against the prevalence of computer screens and mundane building materials. Spaces (even virtual ones) that provoke our curiosity through light shadow or mystery act as invitations to participate and be surprised. As these relationships are strengthened, so too are the grounds for potential.

The issues raised in this probe are explored further in: “How to Work with Space - Spatial Knowledge in Organizations and Research Practice”

Figure 1 Shadows & Reflections

References

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Gómez, P. (2016). Attunement. The MIT Press.

Harris, A. (2021). A Sensory Education. Routledge.

Howes, D. (2005). Introduction. In D. Howes (Ed.), Empire of the senses: The sensory culture reader (pp. 1–17). Berg.

King, D., & Janiszewski, C. (2011). Affect-gating. Journal of Consumer Research, 38(4), 697–711.

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Sharkey, L. (2019). 28 ASMR Triggers for Anxiety Releif, Sleep, and more. Health Line. https://www.healthline.com/health/asmr-triggers

Tanizaki, J. (1977). In praise of shadows. (T. J. Harper & E. G. Seidensticker, Trans.) Leete’s Island Books.

Trigg, D. (2012). Introduction. In The memory of place (pp. 3–42). Ohio University Press.