Screensavers & Campfires

Next to the (long and nostalgic) history of desktop backgrounds, screen-savers and campfire-dvds stand current phenomena developing on content platforms like YouTube. A Zen-Master once told me: “If it exists it will be on YouTube. If it doesn't exist it will be on YouTube too.” This counts especially for calming and soothing content. Relaxation content is not only limited anymore to Rain, Thunder and Waterfalls. You can listen to hours of atmospheric ghetto-, war-, cat-, frying bacon-, womb-, or fidget spinner sound. If this is too much for you, just tune into: “SILENCE for 8 Hours”.

Otherwise you have the chance to watch and listen to people peacefully cooking Ethiopian Hummus, unboxing a Vegan Beauty Box, testing their Back Allergy or reviewing the N64 Cartridge Protector. Ambient sound and music for every mindful activity from Meditation, Studying, Yoga, Hypnosis or Sleeping will be provided. The noise range stretches over every imaginable level of the color spectrum and wavelengths potentially cover the whole greek alphabet.

In this corner of YouTube the sensation of close listening and hearing sound, becomes the crucial part of the content. But because YouTube works audio-visually, the visual part also needs some form of treatment, sometimes pragmatic, often generic and sometimes artistic. In phenomena like ASMR audio and visual input stand in a close relationship to each other.