Score for a VR-piece by Memo Akten
FIGHT is a Virtual Reality artwork commissioned by STRP in which the viewer’s two eyes are individually presented with radically different images, resulting in a phenomenon known as binocular rivalry. Presented with rival signals, the conscious mind does not ‘see’ – or perceive – both images blended as one might expect, but instead ‘sees’ only one of the two images, and unpredictably alternates between them with unstable, patchy transitions. Which of the two images the viewer perceives, how and when they alternate depends on the viewer’s physiology. Everybody will ‘see’ something unique, even though they are presented with the same images. The act of looking around and exploring the rival stimulus allows the viewer to probe which sections of each signal becomes dominant and which is suppressed, further underlining the notion that seeing – and in broader terms sensing and perception in general is an active process, driven by movement, expectations and intent. The picture we see in our conscious minds is not a direct representation of the outside world, or of what our senses deliver, but is of a simulated world, reconstructed based on our expectations and prior beliefs.
Commissioned by and premiered at STRP 2017 in Eindhoven, opening on 24th March 2017.