Artemis Han

Artemis is a Taiwanese-Canadian designer whose work engages with the intersection of mental health and space. Throughout her two years at the RCA, Artemis’ projects and research have explored the influence of sensory experiences and perception within spatial contexts.

Graduating in 2018, Artemis holds a bachelor's degree in Interior Design from the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University. She has gained professional experience as an interior designer, working on projects in the institutional, private residential, and retail sectors in Canada and Taiwan, within both interior design and architecture firms.

coding style diagram showing design methodology for a new type of ASMR

[ autonomous sensory ] : < mediation of the liminal >

Amidst the growing isolation and disconnection between the mind and body, as well as the individual and collective, prevalent in current mental health systems, this project draws inspiration from ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response). ASMR is a phenomenon that elicits feelings of calmness and pleasantness through synaesthetic experiences, specifically auditory to tactile sensations. Learning from ASMR, the project proposes a design methodology constituting a new type of spatial ASMR utilizing the mediation of the liminal.

Challenging the notion of fixed positions, ASMR contains various healing methods and properties that are parallel with collective practices like the N'deup ritual in Senegal, and stereotypy, the sensory stimulation in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. ASMR demonstrates that entities can exist in liminal space. The becoming of one to the other is the mediation that allows for contradictory embodiments of being.

The project also looks at the material matter kinetic sand used in ASMR, and the unique tactility that enables it to break apart and be remolded into endless creations. Incorporating this cyclical process of undoing and redoing along with ASMR’s mediation between binaries, the design methodology utilizes a media-based algorithm that engages users with the interplay of physical and digital spatial data into a mediative sensorial spatial experience.

Would acknowledging the possibilities of becoming through liminal space help overcome constrictive binaries of being?

Would the liminal help us gain a deeper comprehension of the complexity of mental health?

[ sensory cosmogram ] – The video explores the sets of containership placed on an individual creating collective isolation.

[ cosmogram ] – The emergence of the ASMR community is a symptom of the collective isolation that resulted from extractive neoliberal solutions packaged as care. It highlights the continuous separation of the mind and body and the individual and collective contributing to isolation in mental health infrastructures.

[concept diagram] – Although separating to view ASMR, individuals are already in the physical, collectively, and are collectively experiencing ASMR in the virtual, individually. ASMR and its network are a mediating medium between the individual and collective, body and mind, and virtual and physical.

<folding> – The diagram was the start of playing with binaries. Made by imagining the digital diagram as a physical sheet of paper and how it would be physically turned from a two-dimensional diagram into three dimensions, the result was the action of folding.

[methodology] – This approach shifts from the current ASMR focus of translating auditory to tactile sensations, to the transformation of space to a digitized spatial experience by using the interplay of spatial sensations.

[scenario one] – diagram depicting steps taken to create an environment that mediates between the anxiety felt in the bedroom to the soothing openness of the beach.

[scenario two] – diagram depicting collaborative steps taken to create an environment that mediates between the isolation felt in public space to the intimacy of a private living room.

various diagrams depicting the process and architecture of video outputs

asmr sensory-sensorial

Artemis Han

[ autonomous sensory ] : < mediation of the liminal >

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Royal College of Art