This experimental short uses found-footage and found-audio to explore the tactile and visceral relationship of sound and image. ASMR soundscapes of museum restoration are combined with 1950s film noir to create an unexpected mix of surfaces.
Director statement
This experimental video draws on my collaboration with sound artist, designer and researcher, Julie Rose Bower, and our shared concerns with foley work and its embodied nature. The video uses Robert Aldrich’s classic film noir, Kiss Me Deadly, as a vehicle through which I respond to Bower’s work on the relationship between foley and ASMR practices. In it, I use several examples from her series ‘ASMR at the Museum’ to explore the visceral qualities of sound and a playful dynamic between sound and image. The sounds of sequins, paper, tulle and keys stand in for shoes on concrete, match strikes, knife pulls and punches. Through these juxtapositions, the gendered associations of ASMR with femininity and pleasure are reconstituted into a noir world of violence and danger.
Bio
Lucy Fife Donaldson is an audiovisual essayist and senior lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews. Her audiovisual essays have been screened at international festivals, included in Sight & Sound’s best video essay list (2022, 2023, 2024) and received awards, including 1st prize (international video essay) at the Adelio Ferrero Awards, Runner Up/ Honourable Mention at the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies annual awards. Her research focuses on embodiment and materiality in film and television, and she has published widely on film sound, design, performance and creative labour. She is the author of Texture in Film (2014) and an editor of Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism.
Sources and acknowledgements
The video reuses footage from Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, USA, 1955) and audio from the ASMR at the Museum series (Conserving Sandie Shaw’s Eurovision Dress; Humidifying Belinda Wright’s Ballet Tutu; Talking Pages: A Geometry Pop-up Book; Unlocking a 17th Century Strong Box), made by Julie Rose Bower at the V&A (http://www.julierosebower.com ). Thanks to Julie Rose Bower, Joel Burges, Scott Donaldson, Colleen Laird, Dayna McLeod, Jeffrey Romero Middents, Vika Paranyuk, Alison Peirse, and Barbara Zecchi.
Pebbles Underground is focused on showcasing and promoting experimental, avant-garde, underground, and no-to-low budget projects by artist-humans from all over the world. Absurd, uncanny, witty, humorous, slow-video – all are welcomed, and loved.
Pebbles Underground is an independent project not funded by any government or corporation, and we intend to keep it that way. Main source of funding is personal donations from humans organizing the project, who are artists themselves, and the main drive of the project is formed by the energy and involvement of the organizers, and the public.
