Fight

FIGHT is an un-Virtual Reality artwork in which the viewer’s two eyes are presented with radically different images, resulting in a phenomenon known as binocular rivalry. Presented with rival signals, the conscious mind ‘sees’ an unstable, irregular, animated patchwork of the two images; with swipes and transitions. The nature of these irregularities and instabilities depend on the viewer’s physiology.

The act of looking around allows the viewer to probe which sections of the signals become dominant or suppressed – a reminder that seeing (and in broader terms 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.

Even though everybody is presented with the exact same images in this work, your conscious visual experience will be different to mine. I cannot see what you see, you cannot see what I see. And what we both see, is different to what is actually presented. We are all unable to see the entirety of the ‘reality’ before us.