The Light Eaters

The Light Eaters is a convergence of art, light and altered states of consciousness, unfolding across Vision Hall and The Salon at Town Hall by Bottaccio for one weekend. Curated by Virginia Damtsa and Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, the exhibition features work by Amanda Feilding, Brion Gysin, Carsten Höller, Philip Vermeulen, Loie Hollowell, Chris Levine, Liliane Lijn, Tomás Saraceno, James Turrell and Leo Villareal, with the immersive installation Chasing the Dot by Philip Vermeulen. On Saturday, four panels ask how the brain builds perception and the self, whether a machine could ever be conscious, what altered states reveal about ordinary experience, and where perceptual art ends and spectacle begins. Saturday panels The Unbearable Lightness of Being – The science of the self How the brain constructs perception and the sense of self, “controlled hallucination”, interoception, and what consciousness science can actually establish. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? – Machine consciousness Whether an AI could ever have subjective experience, how we would know, and what moral obligations could arise if we genuinely couldn’t rule consciousness out. Altered States – Psychedelics, meditation and hallucination What psychedelic states, meditation, dreaming and hallucination reveal about how ordinary perception is constructed. The Doors of Perception – Art at the limits of perception Artists using light, sound, immersion and duration to act directly on the nervous system, and the distinction between genuinely perceptual art and spectacle. Chasing the Dot Chasing the Dot: Ganzfeld = Wavefield is Philip Vermeulen’s immersive light work, in which visitors are enveloped in fields of shifting colour. It had its world premiere at Lowlands festival in the Netherlands in August 2026, where 10,000 people queued to experience it over three days, and has been acquired by Kunstmuseum Den Haag for its collection. In partnership with Double Moon, with support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.