Interview and editing The Kanto team
Introduction and images University of Melbourne
Featuring a floating, mobile ecosystem and an original sound installation in the heart of the Venice lagoon, the University of Melbourne researchers’ Song of the Cricket at the 2025 Venice Biennale will house the critically endangered Adriatic Marbled Bush-Cricket, a singing species that once thrived in Venice.
Once common across the North Adriatic coast, the Adriatic Marbled Bush-Crickets’ total habitat has shrunk to approximately 0.57 square kilometers, with an estimate of fewer than 5,000 adults left. Researchers will collect, breed, and relocate the insects to initiate a reintroduction of the species into the Venice lagoon. They will also investigate smarter land use and adaptive conservation strategies to tailor the species management for future climate conditions.
Designed by a team led by the University of Melbourne Urban Ecology and Design Lab with Professor Alex Felson, the exhibit is part ecological research and part living artwork, created to raise awareness of the crickets’ plight and offer tangible solutions for habitat rehabilitation.
Kanto had a chat with Felson to know more about the installation and how it hopes to assist in reconstructing vital cricket populations in the Venice lagoon.
University of Melbourne Urban Ecology and Design Lab with Professor Alex Felson and Associate Professor Miriama Young
What drew your team to the Adriatic Marbled Bush-Cricket in particular? Was this species chosen for symbolic reasons, ecological urgency, or something more pragmatic? Were other threatened species endemic to the Adriatic considered?
My lab has been working with Ary Hoffmann and Michael Kearney from Biosciences on Matchstick Grasshopper translocations into Royal Park in Melbourne. The Matchstick grasshopper matures over winter and provides a food source for Marbled geckos, garden skinks, fairy wrens and other small species. In this way, the reintroduction can serve as a food web catalyst and improve biodiversity. We used the designed experiments framework that I developed to combine ecological research with landscape architecture and urban design to create public art-based experiments.
When the opportunity to submit a proposal for the Venice Biennale arose, I searched for a possible species endemic to Italy that would serve a similar role. The Zeuneriana marmorata (Adriatic Marbled Bush Cricket) stood out for three reasons:
- There is a management plan for the cricket developed by the IUCN in 2018.
- The species lifecycle aligns very well with the Venice Biennale (see attached lifecycle). A major idea of the project was to celebrate the song of the cricket as an indicator of population and ecosystem health. The aligned lifecycle meant that people would be able to enjoy the live cricket song for several months. The breeding season in August will allow us to transfer the eggs to the mobile habitats to be delivered to the translocation sites.
- The cricket was rediscovered in 1996 and a translocation was performed in 2021-2024 with monitoring. This provided evidence of spreading and served to support the current intention of developing translocations into the Venice Lagoon.
Tell us about how this initiative began. Was it primarily led by conservation research, sound art, architecture, or perhaps a collision of all three? And why did you feel the Venice Biennale was the right platform to debut it?
I taught in the School of Architecture at Yale University for ten years before my position at the University of Melbourne. In that time, I became familiar with the Venice Biennale and the importance of this event for architecture. This year’s theme combined the natural with artificial intelligence. It seemed like a good fit for our conservation-based designed experiment focusing on cricket reintroductions. Also, I has some connection with the Biennale director. The proposal was to create a long-lasting multi-year translocation initiative that uses the Venice Biennale as a venue to exhibit and celebrate an actual translocation and help to encourage and set up the longer-term plan.
The proposal combined art with science. We wanted to put the lifecycle of the Cricket and the process of breeding and rehabilitating the species on display. From the start, the sound was a key component of the exhibition. We planned to use recordings of the crickets to supplement the live cricket sounds. Sound and bioacoustics are increasingly being used for research purposes to evaluate biodiversity. This avoids destructive sampling. The sound of the cricket indicates that the population is present. You can evaluate numbers and diversity through sound. The Venice Biennale served as a great space to present the designed experiments framework used in multiple other built projects, including the Million Trees in New York.
The decision on the part of the curators to nominate the project as a Special Project, reinforces the good fit and the support for this living lab.
What practical steps were taken when working with local Venetian authorities and environmental agencies to bring a living species back into the lagoon? How much latitude were you given? How much compromise was required?
We worked with Filippo Buzzetti, an entomologist who is also an expert on the Zeuneriana marmorata. He had performed the translocation in 2021 and has authored several papers. We also brought Axel Hochkirch, the author of the IUCN report, onto the team, as well as several other experts. We prepared a cricket management report that was submitted for review by an outside expert that the Biennale curators brought in. We prepared a permit for collecting the insects from the donor site (Parco del Minco) and received permission. We also contacted and coordinated with the translocation site (Valle Oasi Averto) and secured their support.
While in Italy, we met with the director of the translocation site, and we better understood the land management practices. It turned out to be a wonderful destination, and the director was equally excited about the prospect of receiving the insects. The insect fits into their management regime and requires very few modifications. These were exciting discoveries. We also had an independent veterinarian come to review the exhibition and either provide a stamp of approval or request additional steps.
The project expanded in scope as we brought in CSDILA to work on geospatial planning. We also brought on Miriama Young from Fine Arts at the recommendation of Brendan Wintle from the Melbourne Biodiversity Institute, which provided some funds.
Miri got involved and worked with Monica Lim as sound technician, she developed a composition to accompany the exhibition and expand the influence through sound. She also developed a sound garden natural soundscape that includes the cricket’s song. Finally, she developed a global cricket song, where you could select a cricket from your home country and have it sing a duet with the Zeuneriana for one minute.
For those who won’t be able to see the installation in person, walk us through and describe the visitor experience in your corner of the Arsenale. How will the sound art dimension of the installation work?
We are located in the Gaggiandre. This is a coveted location in the Biennale. The large roof structure provides a unique opportunity to establish a robust sound art project (please feel free to reach out to Miri Young on this). The site is also at the land-water interface. This mirrors the intertidal zone that the crickets inhabit. It allowed us to present the cricket in a land-based enclosure and to have the floating mobile habitats, where we plan to relocate the eggs and use the rafts to bring the crickets to their translocation sites. Therefore, the site accommodated our species’ needs and allowed for an educational opportunity around the intertidal zone (we included this in the poster).
When you turn the corner and walk towards our exhibit, you will first hear the sound of the cricket being played with other wetland sounds. It is a peaceful exhibit and park within the Biennale that offers respite from the intense exhibition spaces. A lot of people visiting also sat and stayed for a while, and rested. When the crickets start singing live in late May, early June, the site will be a special place to hear the live crickets. One can search for crickets in six enclosures, which include two each of a low, medium, and high diversity planting. The enclosures and floating wetlands also include irrigation, which is exposed to illustrate the functional aspects of the experimental aesthetic and design. We plan to have an event in June and again in November to have the shift to mobile habitats be part of a larger event around translocation and the long-term development of the project.
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What were the biggest risks, be it scientific, logistical, or ethical—that your team had to consider in staging a living, mobile conservation exhibit? And how did you weigh the possibility of failure against the value of provocation?
The biggest risks were whether we could find the crickets and keep them alive during the exhibit, and encourage them to breed. Given the loss of insects around the globe and the success of the translocation performed in 2021, we determined that, with the right group of experts, we could perform a similar translocation and do so as part of the Biennale. This creates an amazing venue to celebrate the species and publicise the dire condition of the organism.
The hope is that the translocation will introduce a new population to the Venice Lagoon. Another risk was the cost of working in Venice. It is quite costly to ship and build things in Venice and have them transported to the site. It took a long time to raise the funds needed to pull off the project which has a budget of roughly 160k AUD. The amount of work to pull off a biennale project of this scale also required experience and a skilled team. It was challenging to establish this within the University of Melbourne.
In what ways do you see this project reflecting or even challenging the way Australians think about native species and wildlife conservation? Are there parallels in public sentiment between Venice and Melbourne/Australia?
The project framework has its origins in Australia around translocation strategies. The Designed Experiments approach is a model I developed in the USA back in 2005 (see attached), however, there are similar experimental research based design projects being built in Australia. Italy has less biodiversity research ongoing.
This is a great opportunity to bridge international practices. Australia has more permitting requirements and restrictions on translocation. One of the big ideas of the translocation has to do with the recent flood defence system that was installed over the last several decades called the MoSE. This flood defence system (the most expensive of its kind in Europe), impacts from 140 centimeters to 3 meters. This intertidal area is exactly the area where the cricket inhabits.
Our long-term proposal is to establish a series of cricket populations across the lagoon and to use the health and spread of the cricket population (using bioacoustics) as a sentinel and an indicator of ecosystem health. Since the cricket inhabits the space that the use of the MoSE will directly impact (e.g. if they activate the MoSE, it blocks water from entering the lagoon – the more it is used the more likely that the lagoon will start to shift into a fresh water system- this will directly impact the cricket habitat.). Ideally, we can set up a series of populations through the designed experiments model and test the health of the translocated species over time as a tool to monitor and manage the hydrology and use of the MoSE not just for flood defenses but also for ecosystem management.
What does long-term success look like to the team, not just for the exhibit but for the crickets themselves? What do you want both visitors and your ‘performers’ to take away after the show? Will the crickets remain in Venice after the Biennale, and who will take responsibility for their future?
We hope we can initiate a large-scale initiative to translocate populations of Zeuneriana marmorata across the Venice Lagoon. We have identified the specific location for the first translocation. The site is called a Valle. This is a very old sustainable fisheries system that was built hundreds of years ago. Embankments were made that kept the Valles as a distinct but connected area to the Lagoon. During the Aqua Alta’s the Valles might get some salt water, but otherwise, they are separated.
The Valles include a series of freshwater channels controlled by sluices and are a kind of microcosm representation of the larger MoSE System. These conditions provide an ideal opportunity to manage these ecosystems for biodiversity and to test the management of the habitats on behalf of the cricket population as a way of testing options and informing the broader management of the MoSE for habitats in the future. •
Song of the Cricket by University of Melbourne runs from May 10 to November 23, 2025, in the Gaggiandre of the Venice Architecture Biennale. The exhibit is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., except Tuesdays. Admission is free.
