I Light Codes
Pigment, pulse and phōs
Exhibition presenting light as language - reading the signals that pass between nature, the body, and technology.
16–18 July 2026 House of Annetta · Spitalfields
The Exhibition
The experience unfolds through layers of reception. A series of monochromatic works, created through layered organic textures and natural pigments made from plants, minerals, soil, crystals and meteorites, explores how material can hold atmosphere, sensation and trace. Built slowly, layer by layer, each piece reveals subtle shifts in tone, depth and presence.
Alongside these works, digital experiments capture the viewer’s pulse in real time, translating biological rhythm into moving visual waves through remote photoplethysmography (rPPG). This dialogue between the still and the live extends into the firefly forest, where a remembered encounter with bioluminescence becomes a shared field of movement, flicker and afterimage. The work surrounds the viewer with shifting traces that feel both organic and digital.
Rather than asking visitors to decode everything intellectually, Light Codes invites a slower form of attention: looking quietly, noticing breath, pulse, atmosphere and emotional charge. The exhibition becomes a space where body, nature, memory and digital feedback meet.
This meeting feels especially resonant at House of Annetta, the former home of Annetta Pedretti and a site associated with cybernetic research, feedback and living systems. In this context, Light Codes adds a new layer to the building’s history of relation, response and exchange.
The catalogue
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XXIV Meet the Artists
Artist
Florence Dassonville
Florence Dassonville is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist working with raw materials, natural pigments, and intuitive processes. Born into a lineage of artists, creation has been a constant current throughout her life. Based in London, her path through auction houses, museums, and now the Royal Academy of Arts continues to shape her visual language, placing her in dialogue with both historical and emerging practices. Her work is deeply embodied. Using self-made natural binders and pigments, she enters heightened intuitive states to translate the unseen into form, bringing fragments of the unconscious into tangible presence. Each piece acts as a conduit: raw, energetic, and intentionally unrefined. “People often say, ‘oh I could do that, just scribbles’ and honestly, if it makes you feel something, please do it. My work isn’t about technique, it’s about transmission. It’s about what moves through you, what resonates, what shifts.”
Artist
Steven Irby
Steven Irby is a London-based developer and experimental digital creator whose work moves between technology, memory, animals, nostalgia, and shared digital experience. His projects often transform simple digital interactions into small worlds people can enter together, where coded systems become spaces for feeling, attention, and play. Working across responsive interfaces, moving image, and immersive digital environments, he is drawn to the emotional life of technology and the ways systems can register presence, hold memory, and create moments of quiet connection. His works often begin with observation, whether of behaviour, light, movement, or interaction, and unfold into experiences that feel both intimate and collective. For Light Codes, Steven contributes works that explore how digital systems can hold feeling, from live pulse-responsive visuals to an immersive firefly forest shaped by remembered light.
Program
- Thu 16 July Opening Night Private view · by RSVP6:30–9pm
- Fri 17-Sat 18 July General admission Open to all11am–5pm
- Fri 17 July Friday Lates Evening opening · Bring own drinks · by RSVP5–9pm
- Sat 18 July Workshop Kundalini Activation10–11:15am
The exhibition is also open free, no RSVP needed — Friday 11am–5pm and Saturday 11:30am–5pm.
Reserve a place
Visit
- Dates
- 16–18 July 2026
- Getting there
- Nearest: Liverpool Street station & Shoreditch High Street overground
- Access
- Step-free access is available into the house via a small ramp. Some rooms within the building include steps or restricted circulation space, so full access throughout may be limited.
- Admission
- Free · by RSVP
On colour & access
Light Codes is a largely monochrome exhibition. It does not depend on colour alone to carry meaning; instead it works through contrast, pulse, rhythm, movement, and atmosphere. Even where points of light appear within darkness, the work is intended to be read through intensity and presence as much as colour.
On materials
The paintings are built from natural pigments — plants, minerals, soil, crystals, and meteorites — layered slowly to hold light, depth, and atmosphere. The digital works continue this inquiry through code, projection, and responsive interfaces, where programmed systems turn light, touch, and sensation into image and feedback.