Click into a slower world

Cutlery clattering, whirring and steaming hiss of the coffee machine, soft jazz sounds, in the Background, the sea roars. Much more will not happen this afternoon in a beach café somewhere in the world. The scenery can be enjoyed in peace, for a short moment the viewer gets lost in the surroundings.

And he did not even have to violate pandemic conditions, but just open his laptop. So-called Ambience videos are very popular on the YouTube platform. You could also say animated still images with corresponding soundscape. If you want to distance yourself from the same everyday life, beam yourself into fireplace rooms, cafés, bookshops, wintry snow landscapes, rustic garden houses.

Here you can find content from YouTube

In order to interact with or display content from YouTube and other social networks, we need your consent.

Social networks enable

These supposedly authentic soundscapes are not completely new. Just think of all the digital fireplace stills, which in the course of an incomprehensible hype should make living rooms more comfortable, but in the end only became a testimony of bad taste. "Sex and the City"fans will remember the sound Machine in an unforgettable way, without whose frog sounds the hypersensitive Jack Berger could not find his way to sleep.

Ambience videos want to achieve a little more. Through the combination of auditory and visual impressions, it is thus possible to enter a world that is significantly different from the everyday environment. Some can achieve this only through their imagination, others need support and inspiration to escape into alternative worlds.

Here you can find content from YouTube

In order to interact with or display content from YouTube and other social networks, we need your consent.

Social networks enable

"Ambience videos are a genre of YouTube videos," says media scientist Helle Breth Klausen from Aarhus University in Denmark. "They are related to ASMR videos that combine soundscapes with visual animations to create a certain relaxing atmosphere."The videos are often created in such a way that it looks as if the viewer/listener is immersed in a very specific scene. As if he had made himself comfortable in a dimly lit library or as if he was sitting in a small jazz café in Paris by candlelight during a rainstorm.

Although the term ASMR is often used in connection with Ambience videos, both genres can be used quite differently. The so-called autonomous sensory meridian response experience produces certain stimulating and exciting reactions in the listener, such as goose bumps or tingling on the skin. Since the latest it is therefore also used in the porn industry.

Read also

Ambience videos also fulfill this purpose, for example when it comes to creating a feeling of company or comfort, but they should also be able to relax the viewer/listener: he enjoys the scenery, lets himself drift, his thoughts wander, he feels carefree. "Some people use the videos as an audiovisual backdrop while working, writing or concentrating on a task," says Klausen. "Others turn on an Ambience video before bedtime to feel a sense of company and comfort.“

At first, Klausen says, it may be irritating to stare for minutes at a screen on which nothing seems to happen. But especially the fact that "nothing happens at all" is the point with Ambience videos. "Imagine turning on one of the videos while you're working or trying to fall asleep. Then they use it in this case as an environmental presence and not as something they have to 'keep up' with," says the media scientist. "A film with a plot or a book would interfere with your efforts to concentrate or fall asleep. With Ambience videos, all you have to do is press Play and indulge in the auditory and visual cues to 'teleport' into a world that is simpler, slower and less distracting and doesn't expect anything from you.“

Here you can find content from YouTube

In order to interact with or display content from YouTube and other social networks, we need your consent.

Social networks enable

In a broader sense, the Ambience videos could therefore also be used to treat anxiety disorders or to hide everyday life and associated worries in difficult times, such as the lockdown. Those who have only had their own walls in view for almost exactly one year may be grateful for a change of location, even if only in a virtual way.But they can also be suitable for escaping the oversupply and a daily flood of e-mails and numerous zoom impressions. Paradoxically, you actually have to make a decision for one of the Ambience videos that are offered to you on numerous channels – and then spend a lot more time on the laptop instead of just closing it.