Close Circuit

Close Circuit is an audiovisual essay exploring the affective power of repetition in ‘oddly satisfying’ and ASMR videos. The visual source material we used consisted of online videos connected to the OS genre, while the auditory source material was compiled from ASMR videos. The editing structure reflects the fragmented repetitivity of the source videos that have been looped and manipulated through different compositing, distortion, and AI effects to create a seamless flow of motion that is at once mesmerizing and disorienting. Hereby, we aim to emphasize the affective intensity of OS/ASMR videos as well as their uncanny nature as mechanical animated loops, depicting them as a manifestation of the ‘fraught relation’ between our bodies and our machines.