ASMR - Brain Tingles
We were very influenced by ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response), a term that denotes both a tingly sensation evoked by sounds and situations of personal attention, and a youtube cult of videos designed to evoke that sensation. After doing some research at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama into how ASMR works, we wanted to use it in live performance to evoke certain states of listening in our audience.
AURAL
Objects and Textures
Our process of devising the sound began with texture. We brought together a mixture of objects and explored the sounds and sensations they created. We then tested this through the binaural microphone and explored the different ways in which we could manipulate and transmit these sounds. We made binaural recordings with lots of different objects and listened to them.
Our object-instruments in reharsal and performance.
The Voice of Authority
We were inspired by the work of movement director, Hofesh Shechter, and particularly the ‘Everyday Moments’ series of audio tracks to be listened to at specific times of the day. We used this style to create our own moment of guided hypnosis, called Don't Listen to Me. It features an instructional voice underscored by gamelan music by Very Clock member Anna Clock, and moments where the voice dissolves into a chaotic jazz drum solo by Buddy Rich. Through this we wanted to explore different modes of embodied listening and how instructional voices function through headphones.
Click on the link below to listen to Hofesh Shechter's 'Everyday Moment':
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/audio/2011/may/20/everyday-moments-podcast-audio-drama
The Voice in the Ear
As three performers all with a background in music and singing we decided to compose some vocal music for One Moment. We experimented with different modes of vocal improvising, and how our movement altered the way travelling sound from the voice can affect the body when transmitted through the binaural microphones.
We also experiemented with using our voices and other sounds to create different kinds of song that were evocative to us of our characterisations of Past, Present and Future.
Music
Music played a key role in our piece and also our devising process. At the start of each rehearsal we would play loud rhythmic music and partake in a chaos dance which would involve us moving spontaneously and erratically around the space, feeling the music in our bodies. Chaos dancing grew from exercises whereby we would try and dance out of rhythm and out of time with the songs as an experiment of trying to understand what it feels to be ‘in’ and ‘out’ of time.
You can listen to one of our rehearsal playlists on spotify!
Recreating the live space
We experimented with how we could play with the audience's headphone space, with pre-recorded tracks mimicking sounds that could be happening in the live space, making them question the sound source. We recorded fake audience conversations that could be played before the start of the show.
