Week 10:
THEME: Stillness
Full video available here:
https://youtu.be/s4qmjHJ_BNc
CONTEXT: This week I decided to return to creating asmr, this time visually, inspired by the short works of Andreas Wannerstedt and the work “House Without Rules” by Wang & Söderström. All 3 Artists were featured in an ASMR exhibition called “Weird Sensation Feels Good” in 2020, curated by J Taylor Foster, who describes ASMR as:
“A physical sensation: euphoria or deep calm, sometimes a tingling in the body (...) Like meditation or yoga, ASMR happens to both your body and to your mind. It is not about speed, but about focus and slowness. ASMRtists do not seek to entertain but to relax; for experiencers, it offers a degree of insulation from a noisy, wandering world. Through sound and film, shared through broadcasting platforms such as YouTube, works of ASMR make room for close-looking, close-listening, and close-feeling.”
Close looking at intentionally slow art is a big part of Wannerstedt’s work in particular, a series of slow repetitive, hypnotic, satisfying physics tests with hypothetical frictionless objects. Wannerstedt’s works, always 10-30 second gifs, usually involve perfectly shaped 3D objects travelling into perfectly sized holes, as obstructions move out of the way at just the perfect moment. Their appeal reminds me a lot of early cinema, and how the first film makers used the rearrangeable time powers of filming to basically turn it into a medium for magic tricks before it was a medium for narratives. 3D modelling and physics do this same thing but with even more control, over matter and shape and gravity and time. Each of his works makes you focus closely and see how each movement happens, worrying it won’t work out even though it always will, as it has all been meticulously planned from the beginning.
Wang & Söderström’s work on the other hand, while also repetitive in a hypnotic way, leans into the absurdity of 3D shapes and physics, doing unpredictable things that don’t make logical sense. Floating statues for example. They also lean into the simple beauty of physics in action, dozens of tiny fabric objects colliding, metal shapes rolling over infinite warping carpets, that kind of thing. This inspired the initial idea I had to work with falling objects in soft body physics for the first time. Also because it will contribute to my practice, and because I’ve wanted to try out making 3D physics works, but found the idea daunting.
METHOD:
Look into creating soft body physics in blender, through tutorials, and see where the medium took me.
Realise it feels a little empty and I have more time, so record a bunch of sounds, (Pouring water, crumbing trash bags, tapping, pulling tape squeezing a bottle) then distort them and then use them as sound effects over the work.
RESPONSE:
The final work I created is a series of softbody physics tests involving transparent jello cubes dropping onto various things. The video is about 6 minutes in total and designed to loop. The sound effects used are intended to enhance the satisfying effect of the jelly making contact and bouncing, and change the implied physics from wetness to glassiness to stickiness.
REFLECTION:
As my first dive into 3D physics, I’m not unhappy with my results. But this was little more than a first venture into the medium. The more I worked on the soft-bodies and discovered what I could do, the more ideas I got for better, more satisfying visuals, but was too short on time to execute them. This serves more as an experiment and a prototype than a finished work. Also, the final sound effects don’t match up that well with the visuals, to an interesting discordant effect but to the detriment of the intended calming effect.
In terms of seeking satisfaction, I think my favorite result is the purple cubes dropping neatly into place. It gave me that ideal neat Wannerstedt-like effect I was going for, especially with regard to the stable moving camera. The orange cubes falling take more from Wang & Söderström, the satisfaction comes from anticipating and witnessing the connection between the falling cubes and the stable balls. It’s less hypnotising and more interesting. The blue cube drop is my least favorite, and was also my first attempt, though I do like the stickiness sound test I did with it.
Despite having the impression that the work felt incomplete without sound, a review of my sources showed me how little sound a visual ASMR like these usually has. That said, my final work was more about the connection between objects in collision than a usual visual ASMR, for example Wannerstedt’s works looping perfectly implies that everything in contact has already been in contact before, nothing is new or touching for the first time. My work implies that every impact from a cube is random and unique and therefore the sound created from these impacts adds to this effect. My work necessitates sound more than a usual ASMR, from my sources anyway.
I think the Wannerstedt works I was inspired by incorporate playing with fate. You’re not sure if something will work out, if a peg will go into a hole, but it will because everything is perfectly planned. The viewer’s instincts though, are centered on chance, on “but what if it doesn’t work out this time”. This anticipation is what makes you watch and keeps you hypnotised. I think I accomplished this with my purple work, to a certain extent. Another type of play at play is frivolity, or freedom, homo ludens. Nothing is accomplished in a 3D ASMR, objects of no value, sometimes of no namable description, are moved among other objects. The works are intentionally abstract as to have no bearing on the materials or meanings of the outside world. They can only exist there and now, inside a video. This I think I did accomplish, in all 3 of my cub setups. The colour pallets, music and sounds I chose, and locations I created, were intentionally abstract and strange and this went a long way toward creating the hypnotic effect I was going for.
“Weird Sensation Feels Good” (2020) and quotes from J Taylor Foster:
Wang & Söderström’s work:
https://vimeo.com/wangsoderstrom
Interview with Wannerstedt and a look at his works:
By Holland Kerr
Email Holland Kerr
Published On: 19/05/2021