ASCENDO Immersive Audio GmbH—a luxury home audio company, and a developer of infrasonic subwoofer technology–has partnered with Net Zero accredited architect Marc Sherratt of MSSA (Marc Sherratt, Sustainability Architects), and infrasonic musician and sound designer Franco Schoeman of B1DR Laboratory, to exhibit at Biennale Architettura 2025, which will be open to the public from May 10 to November 23, 2025.
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Talking to Elephants Uses ASCENDO Infrasound to Guide Endangered Creatures
The exhibit Biennale Architettura 2025 Talking to Elephants restores the extinct ability of elephants to migrate across the Limpopo Province of South Africa. The exhibit features an ecologically sensitive, infrasonic “language” that can be used to talk to elephants, teaching them how to use a newly proposed 1,000-kilometer (621 miles) wildlife migration corridor. This corridor links existing, fenced conservation areas that already house overpopulated herds of elephants. The route uses a prototype technology of Al-driven, elephant-only gates and water points that allow wild elephants to safely traverse fence lines between public and private land, without direct human interference. The technology allows for the return to the large-scale act of seasonal wildlife movement between grazing lands, but now along corridors that utilize smaller parcels of mainly private land.
The high-performance audio manufacturer points out that South Africa has an overpopulation of the African Savanna Elephant (Loxodonta africana) within its large, fenced conservation areas. This overpopulation, according to authorities, leads to unnatural population control, including the use of culling and contraception of this endangered species. However, these areas are usually surrounded by smaller reserves and private land that can accommodate migratory elephant movement if managed correctly.
“Our exhibition would not have been possible without ASCENDO’s support. These types of projects, though radical, spend years in R&D, until someone puts their money where their mouth is,” says Sherratt. “Being part of La Biennale di Venezia is life-changing for any architect, but what is more powerful is finding partners like ASCENDO that can support a project between proof of concept and scaled implementation. This is now where we are at.”
Talking to Elephants has been designed to help rural communities understand these animals as assets by using elephants to increase local food security. Elephants can be used as seed dispersal agents of locally fruiting trees to help establish and maintain self-sustaining food forests along the route.
Biennale Architettura 2025 Exhibit Puts Attendees in the Heart of Elephant Herd
Explaining the exhibit in greater detail, Biennale Architettura 2025 features three ASCENDO 24-inch sealed infrasonic subwoofers, as well as an active coaxial 12-inch speaker for higher frequencies, and the company’s DSP and amplifier for each subwoofer. Suspended from the roof of the exhibition space is a model of the flared horn shape intended for the wide distribution of infrasonic frequencies across the African landscape, designed by Sherratt. Beneath the model, a cymatic plate—a device that visualizes sound vibrations—illustrates how elephants change their environment and how infrasonic communication travels through the soil. Informed by his own compositions and research on elephant communications, Franco designed the soundscape to provide the audience with an experience similar to being inside an African elephant herd. Visitors can hear a 14-minute cycle of elephant rumbles accompanied by sounds of the Limpopo province.
“We feel fortunate to be part of this project to potentially help protect endangered elephants in South Africa using our infrasonic subwoofer technology,” says Geoffrey Heinzel, co-managing partner, ASCENDO. “To be sought out by infrasonic musician Franco Schoeman and trailblazing architect Marc Sherratt, who proposes elephants as ecological partners, gives our technology a new purpose that is both unexpected and rewarding. This Biennale exhibit is just the start.”
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