Description: In his project ARCA-DNA, Alessandro Zannier reflects on the concepts of Habitat – Backup – Extinction. The audiovisual installation features soundscapes composed from fragments of the Venetian environment, arranged according to the DNA sequences of an endangered lagoon species: the halophytic saltmarsh plant Spartina maritima, one of the largest living organisms in the world by mass, volume, and area.
The concept of Backup, a natural progression from that of Habitat, is most closely tied to the 2023 concept album Arca (as Ottodix), which also inspired the artist’s interdisciplinary DVRI residency across Venice. In the album, Zannier envisions a vast space ark—its form recalling both Noah’s Ark and the turtle Chelonia mydas—as humanity’s imagined refuge.
This work acts as a black box containing the DNA of a place: habitat backups stored against catastrophe, seed-capsules designed to be sown elsewhere, enabling future generations to recover the deep essence of a lost landscape—its maps, history, artworks, environmental data, species, and archives.
Zannier’s earlier project ENT, linking environmental data between Italy and six continents, began between Venice and New Zealand and concluded in the United States, entering the collection of the Italian Cultural Institute in New York with the support of international curator and architect Alessandro Melis.
He also collaborates with universities and research institutes worldwide, producing artistic and sound-based investigations into complex systems and the interplay between nature and society. Under his musical alias Ottodix, he has released 8 concept albums, 2 collections, and a biography, a pioneering project in Italian electro-alternative music. Today Ottodix concerts bring science, philosophy, and environmentalism into cultural and museum spaces.
Alessandro Zannier Alessandro Zannier was born in Treviso (Italy) in 1971, where he lives and works.
He is a conceptual artist who works with music and visual arts, between physics, environment and big data with works and concerts with a multimedia and popular slant.
A graduate in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, he has exhibited in international solo and group shows including at the Correr Archaeological Museum in Venice, various editions of the Italy China Biennale between Beijing and Turin, the Curitiba Biennale 2019 (Brazil) and two consecutive Venice Biennials 2021/2022.
Under the musical alias "Ottodix" he has released 8 concept albums, a collection and a biography, a project of Italian electronic wave music that now invades cultural spaces with multimedia concerts with a popularizing approach.
In 2016/17 he presented in Beijing and Berlin the concept album "Micromega" about the scales of magnitude of the matter of the cosmos and the visionary website www.micromegaproject.com considered a real web installation, a hybrid of illustrated "hyper album" and encyclopedia of matter
In 2020 he published "Entanglement", an album on the correlation of phenomena on a global scale, and in 2021/22 the related "ENT" project, now expanding, consisting of a series of twin light installations around the world.
Invited to the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 - Italian Pavilion, and to the Venice Art Biennale 2022 - Cameroon Pavilion and the University of Auckland, the project continues to collaborate with research institutes, universities and museums in Asia, South America and Europe and will continue until 2024.
In 2023, the ENT project lands at the CAFA Museum in Beijing, at Bethanien Kunstquartier in Berlin and in 2024 at the Institute of technology in New York.
Thanks to the album and concept "Arca," a concept between music, science, astronomy, environmentalism and popularization. Zannier was chosen as artist-in-residence 2023 in Venice, with a widespread exhibition made up of concerts, sound installations and works on the themes "habitat, backup, extinction," involving various entities such as CNR ISMAR, Venice Music Conservatory, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Mestre's M9 Museum of the '900 and Ca'Foscari University of Venice.
His recent "Escalation><Involution", a massive immersive video and sound installation on the exponential crescendo of climate crisis related to the cultural impoverishment of the West, is on display at the M9 - Museo del '900 in Mestre, Venice, together with the exhibition on Impressionism, "Arte Salvata" (Art Saved) from the bombing of Le Havre.
