'Fight' is a VR experience by Memo Akten, commissioned by STRP, in which the viewer's two eyes are individually presented with radically different images that trigger 'binocular rivalry'. Presented with rival signals, the conscious mind 'sees' - or perceives - 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.
Fight is part of a broader line of inquiry about self-affirming human biases and our unconscious tendency to selectively only see what we would like to see, and the resulting social polarisation.
Memo Akten is an artist working with computation as a medium who currently is doing a PhD about artificial intelligence and expressive human-machine interaction at Goldsmiths.
