Oddly Dissatisfying

In 2018 the internet magazine Wired published an article about a phenomenon they called ‘the oddly satisfying’. This phenomenon had occurred on videos first shared on the social site Reddit but was soon present all over YouTube. The videos featured very diverse activities such as trash being crunched by machines, but also increasingly highly colored artificial materials such as kinetic sand, cake icing and paint being sliced or poured out over different surfaces. They were all labeled oddly satisfying because of their ability to raise a special feeling.

Up until recently the term had mostly been used in response to auditory phenomena such as accurately recorded whispering voices and nails scratching against a hard surface. Now a new wave of material which was either purely visual or combined close up images of well-lit objects being cut, spread or squeezed accompanied by crisp sounds of the same, washed over the internet.

Frydendahl’s new works are a response to this new phenomena. Having studied different videos suggested to her by ever present algorithms she set out with her analogue 4x5 inch camera. There has always been an urge to unsettle the perfect in her work, to disrupt, to stir up, to scratch or smudge the clean surface. And there still is. It makes sense that she could not leave the internet harmony of the Oddly Satisfying alone.