ASMRcade: Interactive Audio Triggers for an Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response

Abstract

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a sensory phenomenon involving pleasurable tingling sensations in response to stimuli such as whispering, tapping, and hair brushing. It is increasingly used to promote health and well-being, help with sleep, and reduce stress and anxiety. ASMR triggers are both highly individual and of great variety. Consequently, finding or identifying suitable ASMR content, e.g., by searching online platforms, can take time and effort. This work addresses this challenge by introducing a novel interactive approach for users to generate personalized ASMR sounds. The presented system utilizes a generative adversarial network (GAN) for sound generation and a graphical user interface (GUI) for user control. Our system allows users to create and manipulate audio samples by interacting with a visual representation of the GAN’s latent input vector. Further, we present the results of a first user study which indicates that our approach is suitable for triggering ASMR experiences.