Seed's Morgan Powell Releases Visually Disturbing Finger Machine Film

This film started as a couple of explorative clips for Instagram, but for some reason I couldn’t stop making them and I demanded to know why.

Soft and tactile machines are the direct opposite of what you’d expect from machines but this wasn’t it… I realised that it was feeling something physical from watching. This (it turns out) is down to a phenomenon called synaesthesia. It was this mysterious connection to the visuals that was driving my interest… and I really like the thought of being able to hijack someone’s senses.

Science time now: 

Synaesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway

So that’s going on, and so is conflict. 

Synaesthesia and empathy go hand in hand- in order to have perceived feeling you will have empathised in order to feel it. But it’s possible that you challenge your empathy for it, because you are being put in this rather provocative situation you never asked to be in. 

My sting for MTV also plays on the synaesthetic, but this film in parts preceded it.