Taking My Elephants to Venice
My practice sits at the intersection of performance, advanced music technology, and conservation. Over the past years, I’ve been studying and working with infrasonic frequencies drawn from elephant communication, exploring how sound can be experienced not only through hearing, but through the body itself as vibration, pressure, and emotional resonance. This work has opened unexpected pathways, including ways of making music accessible to hearing-impaired audiences, and ways of thinking differently about how humans and animals share space.
None of this happens alone. In South Africa, I work alongside ecologists, architects, engineers, and natural historians on the Elephant Migration Route project – a collective effort to reimagine wildlife corridors and expand habitable zones for elephants, and by extension, all of us. My contribution is sound: recording, producing, and implementing infrasonic signals designed to get elephants to approach a series of gates that will allow them to migrate safely along these corridors without the danger of human interaction. ASCENDO Immersive Audio made it possible to translate this work into a powerful touring infrasonic system. Last year, the project hit the international circuit, including the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, in partnership with Marc Sherratt Sustainability Architects (MSSA).
Let's Discuss the Elephant in the Room
Let's talk about the elephant in the room … or more like, let’s discuss how to get the elephant rumbles into the room without the room falling down on our heads. This is my journey to getting infrasound into rooms and to audiences. I want to blow minds, not eardrums, and bass fatigue is a real thing. This is where ASCENDO and I intersect in the most beautiful way possible.
The first audiences for this work are not seated in theaters. They stand on dry ground, in the early hours of the morning, surrounded by birds, trees, and antelope. They are, of course, my beloved elephants.
I don’t treat infrasonic rumbles, pulses, and long-form signals as just raw musical material. They are handled with care, context, and restraint. Each one carries ecological meaning, and each one reminds us that sound is never neutral; it’s always communicating something. As research for the elephant gates, we reintroduced these infrasonic rumbles back into the landscape as part of ongoing monitoring. These frequencies helped us observe how elephants respond, adapt, and choose new paths. Small shifts in movement can have large consequences.
Bringing this material onto a stage required a different kind of responsibility. Translation, rather than amplification, became the task. The question is never how loud the system can go, but how precisely it can move energy through a space—and through a body—without overwhelming it. In bass terms, this is called “pressurizing a room.” This is where artistic composition and electro-acoustic engineering become essential.
With ASCENDO’s infrasonic system, the work gained physical clarity. Frequencies that once travelled invisibly through soil and air now moved through architectural space with intention. Floors became active surfaces. Walls responded. Listeners felt the sound arrive before they heard it, if they heard it at all. What emerged is not a simulation of the field, but a continuation of its logic and an exciting invitation for full-body “listening.”
La Biennale di Venezia
For many architects, La Biennale di Venezia is a milestone: a place where ideas are tested publicly, materially, and without apology. In 2025, Marc Sherratt Sustainability Architects (MSSA) and I were invited to occupy a curated space within the Architecture Exhibition and to tell a shared story, one that connects elephant communication with the objects around them, namely, our elephant gate migration project.
The challenge was immediate and practical. Our primary infrasonic systems are operating in the field in Africa. If this installation was to remain faithful to the research, we needed infrasonic loudspeakers sourced closer to Venice – systems capable of moving real infrasonic energy, not just conventional bass. Improbably, the solution arrived before the problem was even fully formed!
Through a brief exchange on Instagram, AIA (Ascendo Immersive Audio) reached out. Within days, a partnership took shape. AIA are undisputed leaders in high-end loudspeaker manufacture, and they share an uncommon obsession with infrasound, an obsession made tangible when you encounter, among others, their 100-inch subwoofer system. Their willingness to support our participation in the Biennale made the entire eight-month journey possible. I remain deeply grateful for their generosity, trust, and technical commitment.
The installation itself was precise rather than monumental. At its core sat three 24-inch AIA infrasonic subwoofer systems, paired with a coaxial 10-inch driver to articulate higher frequencies. MSSA designed a suspended waveguide structure that shaped and focused the sound field, positioned in front of four spectrographic iris images, each carrying a message drawn from on-going Elephant Migration Route (EMR) research.
At the centre of the infrasonic field, directly above the coaxial driver, a cymatics plate filled with soil responded to each elephant vocalisation. With every low-frequency call, the surface reorganised itself, making visible the seismic nature of elephant communication. The plate does not illustrate the sound – it reveals its behaviour.
When I arrived in Venice at the end of March to install the work, alongside the technical demands of the installation, something quieter unfolded. Conversations, shared meals, careful listening, and important friendships formed in the hot forge of construction.
In hindsight, these connections became the groundwork for what followed: the international launch of B1DR, and a touring journey that will carry my elephants and my work far beyond the mystical canals of Venice.
