Month: June 2015

Meet Jellybean Green, an ASMR artist on YouTube

/ Dr. Richard / 2 Comments

ASMR Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response UniversityJellybean Green has her Bachelor of Arts degree in performance with a minor in creative writing.

She is a freelance writer, nursing student, and mother living in the United States.

JellyBean Green is also an ASMR artist who creates videos for her YouTube channel, JellyBean Green ASMR.

Jellybean Green shares her insight for what makes a good ASMR artist, beautifully articulates a potential misconception about ASMR artists, envisions a thoughtful demonstration that would definitely motivate more clinicians and researcher to investigate the potential of ASMR, and more.

Below are my questions in bold followed by her replies in italics.

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Neuroscience graduate student writes extensive scientific article about ASMR

/ Dr. Richard / 2 Comments

Kerin Higa is a student in the Neurosciences Graduate Program at University of California, San Diego.

She has published research about behavioral abnormalities in mouse models of psychiatric illness and is currently researching how mitochondrial dysfunction may be contribute to depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other mental health disorders.

Kerin also enjoys writing about science for the general public and science communities.

She has written for the “Gene-of-the-week” blog for biogps.org and is currently writing for the neuroscience blog, NeuWriteSD, which was founded by students in her graduate program. Her writing topics have included hoarding, dissociative identity disorder, and additional behavioral mysteries.

But the latest blog topic she tackled was the science of ASMR. Her in-depth article is titled “Technicalities of the tingles: the science of sounds that feel good. #ASMR” and was posted at the NeuWriteSD blog on June 11, 2015.

In my interview with Kerin she shares her love for Bob Ross, the five most important points in her article, helpful tips for writing about the science of ASMR, and more.

Below are my questions in bold followed by her replies in italics.

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Meet Maiko Yamamoto, director of a dance production inspired by ASMR

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Maiko Yamamoto is an Artistic Director and member of the Theatre Replacement theatre company in Vancouver, Canada. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, with a specialization in Theatre, along with a Masters of Applied Arts in visual arts.

Part of the mission of Maiko and her theatre company is to “build performances that react to contemporary existence.”

This mission was clearly manifested in a recent ASMR-inspired experimental dance work.

The ASMR-inspired show was, “The Sensationalists”. The world premiere was held May 12 – 16, 2015, at The Cultch Historic Theatre in Vancouver.

The show was created by 605 Collective, a Vancouver-based dance company, who commissioned Maiko to direct the work.

These two companies describe their final product as “an immersive performance experience that pushes both companies into new territories, exploring concepts surrounding various sensory phenomena.”

Maiko shares the first time she experienced ASMR, her favorite ASMR video, her goals of the show (which truly embody ASMR), and how the dancers used movements and words to express ASMR.

Below are my questions in bold followed by her replies in italics.

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6-23-15 Update: The 2015 ASMR Convention has been canceled.

/ Dr. Richard / 3 Comments

The event was scheduled for Saturday, September 19th, 2015 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, USA.

Unfortunately, the event has now been canceled.

Tickets sales for the event were being done through Kickstarter.  This means that if the fundraising goal is not met then the event or project usually does not occur.

The initial rate of tickets sales for the event started off too slow to show a strong probability of meeting the fundraising goal.

The organizers of the event, Paige Towers and Bryan Shigekawa, provide some insight about the challenges with the event planning, as well as their heartfelt apologies for canceling the event.

The link to their explanation is below.

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Graduate student writes a theory paper about the ASMR community

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Shawn Watkins is a graduate student in the Communication department at Angelo State University located in Angelo, Texas.

He is interested in the cultural phenomenon of ASMR, including common themes and word meanings that have developed within the ASMR community. Shawn did a literature search on this topic and wrote up a paper about his perspectives and findings for one of his communication classes.

His paper investigates the ASMR community through the lens of Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory.

He has agreed to share his paper and annotated bibliography to help others whom are researching ASMR or are trying to understand ASMR better. A link to his paper is included at the end of this post.

Shawn also agreed to answer some questions about his paper. He shares his inspiration for the paper, his favorite ASMR artist, his objectives for the paper, the most surprising thing he learned about ASMR, and more.

Below are my questions in bold and his replies in italics.

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Meet Dmitri, the ASMR artist of the massageASMR YouTube channel

/ Dr. Richard / 1 Comment

Dmitri is an Information Technologist living on the east coast of Australia, in the city of Gold Coast.

He began making massage videos and then evolved his channel into creating ASMR videos. With over 200,000 followers, this change has proven quite successful.

Dmitri was also brilliant to shift from massage only videos to massage and ASMR videos because the biology of ASMR might just be tapping into some of the same biology that causes massages to feel so relaxing.

I’m fortunate and honored that he agreed to be the first ASMR artist interviewed for this site.

Dmitri shares his thoughts about massage and ASMR, offers advice to new ASMR artists, explains an idea for an ASMR experiment, and more.

Below are my questions in bold, followed by his replies in italics.

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The first ASMR Convention will be held this year in Fall of 2015

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Imagine over 1000 people at a convention. Every person is there because they share an appreciation, a passion, a commitment, and/or a genuine curiosity for ASMR.

The attendees are expected to be ASMR artists, ASMR fans, health professionals, scientists, researchers, and all those with a deep interest in ASMR.

The activities will most likely include Q&A with popular artists, round tables on the art and culture of ASMR, panel discussions on mental health, presentations with results of ASMR research, and demonstrations of the best equipment and technology for creating and enjoying ASMR.

Desiring something more interactive and deeply relaxing? This opportunity for live group ASMR sessions will probably not go wasted.

And of course, expect to mingle, meet, and get to know the heart of the ASMR community.

I started with “imagine” because it has not happened yet. The ink (and sweat) has just dried on getting the venue booked, the dates set, and the website created.

Want to know more details?  Read on.

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