The sound of singing;
The dizzying arpeggios at the end of a classical piano concerto;
Breathtaking vistas that consume the viewer with the majesty of geological form and nature’s multifaceted palette;
Bob Ross’s dulcet assurances that your mistakes are now birds;
The feeling of wet seaweed as it coils around one’s leg, dries, and needs to be scraped off with a car key;
The primal aesthesis that inevitably follows from having a well-buttered flank steak dropped upon one’s forehead from the top of a stepladder;
The sensory experiences which can send a tingle up a person’s spine are as varied as the people who experience them. I’m sure that almost all of us can recall some particularly moving piece of music, scenery, or literature which evoked in us a notable physical response. It might even be cliche to describe something like a Mozart concert as such, but what about other forms of media that we don’t usually expect to carry us away, so to speak?
This Thursday, TAG’s own Natalie Walschots will be exploring the overlap between Let’s Play videos (which document the playthrough of a game, sometimes only a particular segment, and sometimes in it’s entirety) and ASMR videos. ASMR (short for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response), is a perceptual phenomenon that has resulted in an online community of people who experience it. ASMR is usually described as a “tingle” or other pleasant sensation, usually on the scalp and head but often elsewhere on the body, that occurs in response to certain physical and aural triggers. ASMR videos are specifically designed to activate these triggers. Sometimes, Let’s Play videos do this accidentally, and sometimes, Let’s Play videos are composed specifically to include ASMR triggers.
Join us this week and let us save you the trouble of perfecting your remote steak-release mechanism. I promise this will be more interesting and a lot less messy!
I hope to see you all there!
What: A Titillating Talk on the Intersection of Let’s Play and ASMR
When: Thursday, November 13th, from 5-7pm
Where: Centre for Technoculture, Art, and Games – EV 11.655, 1515 St. Catherine W.
Who: Everyone is Welcome!