Over the next month, if you take a ferry from the center of Venice to the island of Giudecca and walk into a former 15th-century convent, you will find yourself figuratively plunging underwater.

The haunting songs of humpback whales will flow around you. A fish will sing its evensong from the sea grass meadows of the Mediterranean. Boats recorded from beneath the surface of the Venetian lagoon will buzz like insects. A galaxy of bioluminescent plankton will glimmer in the sloshing waves.

This audiovisual symphony is part of “As Above, So Below,” a collateral exhibit running during the first month of the Venice Biennale, from Saturday through June 8. The exhibition brings together works by seven artists and art collectives who combine cutting-edge science and technology with traditional methods. Their installations surround visitors with natural sounds, merge their perspectives with those of other species and take them on an immersive journey into the sea, the soil and even a tree to highlight humans’ interdependence with the natural world.

As Elizabeth Zhivkova, a co-curator of the exhibition, put it: “‘As Above, So Below’ emerged from a shared urgency to rethink our relationship with nature, not as something separate from us, but as an interconnected system in which human, ecological and cosmic rhythms reflect one another.”

In addition to the exhibition, “As Above, So Below” is an ongoing research project that includes artist residencies and a podcast featuring conversations with artists and ocean advocates.

The project was born out of a partnership between Zeitgeist19, an environmental curatorial collective founded by Zhivkova and the show’s other co-curator, Farah Piriye Coene, and One Ocean Foundation, a scientific conservation organization based in Milan.

The name, “As Above, So Below,” comes from the Principle of Correspondence in Hermeticism, a spiritual tradition that blends Greek and Egyptian philosophies. It serves as a reminder that everything is connected. “The sea, the soil, the atmosphere, the human body are not separate realms; they are part of one relational field,” Coene said. “The exhibition asks whether art can help us feel that relation again.”

The exhibition’s setting in the former convent and church of Santi Cosma e Damiano — now a science and art innovation hub — fosters a contemplative atmosphere. In lieu of a central altarpiece, visitors encounter an immersive installation from the London-based artist collective Marshmallow Laser Feast, titled “Seeing Echoes in the Mind of the Whale.” In the work, a large-screen video immerses viewers in the sensory perspectives of a bottlenose dolphin, a humpback whale and a sperm whale as they dive and resurface to breathe.

The video plays recordings of dolphins’ trilling whistles, humpbacks’ meditative melodies and sperm whales’ Morse code-like clicks, which resonate throughout the space. To illustrate the use of echolocation to “see” through sound, these vocalizations are coordinated with visual effects. Shimmering swirls and pulsating pixels surround you, giving a sense of what bottlenose dolphins might “see” as they sweep sonar beams across colorful coral reefs, or what sperm whales might sense by blasting clicks to spy giant squid in the dark depths.

Ersin Han Ersin, one of the Marshmallow Laser Feast artists, explained in a video interview that the aim was for audiences to “disembody their own body, and momentarily embody what it is like to be a bottlenose dolphin or a whale.”

While visually speculative, the video is rooted in research. The members of the collective pored over scientific papers, compiled extensive hydrophone recordings and underwater videography, and collaborated with marine biologists and bioacousticians to dive into the sensory experiences of whales and dolphins, Ersin said.

In the process, he said, the artists became more sensitive to the ways noise pollution — the squeals of military sonar, the drumming of shipping traffic and the boom of seismic blasting to find fossil fuels — may be turning the ocean into an acoustic dystopia for animals and plants that live underwater.

“One part of me wants to scream that we are ruining these oceans, but the other part of me knows the best action is always cultivated from a place of love,” Ersin said. That is one goal of the installation, he added: To “make people fall in love with species that they never thought they can relate to.”

In another installation, “Fish String Theory,” Antoine Bertin, an artist who splits his time between Paris and Alicudi island, Italy, amplifies the surprisingly talkative world of fish. Bertin was inspired by reports of a “kwa” sound emanating from Mediterranean seagrass meadows. Scientists found that the kwa chorus most likely comes from scorpionfish. These venomous creatures have a muscular apparatus that functions like an internal violin.

Bertin made underwater recordings of scorpionfish and created fish-shaped sculptures with strings. When his recordings of scorpionfish play, the frequencies from the recordings activate electromagnets that vibrate the strings on the fish sculptures, creating a sound similar to a guitar or harp. The installation also includes Bertin’s underwater recordings of the Venetian lagoon, forming a dialogue between the scorpionfish song and the city’s aquatic soundscape.

Bertin is fascinated by the fact that life emerged in primordial seas, and said in an interview that he hoped that his installation would help people “return to the ocean as listeners.” His aim, he added, was to “create an experience that connects humans and fish in a sort of co-presence, to find out if we can resonate together.”

In “Water Older Than the Sun (Caspian),” the Kazakhstan-born artist Almagul Menlibayeva connects viewers to the Caspian Sea, which is shrinking because of climate change and water diversion — and being contaminated by drilling for oil and gas.

Menlibayeva pointed out that modern societies often see water as a resource to be used. She said in an interview that her installation positions water as an archive of deep time and as a “cosmic, alive entity.” As the title suggests, water is older than the sun because this cosmic compound formed as a result of supernovae explosions, then eventually came to Earth and condensed into oceans that gave rise to life. As such, “water has a memory,” Menlibayeva said, adding: “Water witnessed us as we appeared.”

At the center of Menlibayeva’s installation is a textile made from hand-sewn fabrics and A.I.-generated images of her artwork printed on synthetic silk that depict water, animals and robot-like humans. Fishing nets collected from the Caspian Sea dangle around the textile. Screens placed on the floor like a shoreline show surreal images, such as hands sewing water. Projected behind these pieces is “Requiem for the Caspian” by the London-based filmmaker Suad Gara, a short documentary that reveals the impact of the sea’s collapse on local people.

Just inside the entrance of the church, the Azerbaijan-born artist Elnara Nasirli has turned a reclaimed Italian olive tree into an instrument in “Whispering Forest.” Nasirli translated trees’ bioelectric rhythms into music and vibrations that softly play from contact points triggered by motion detection. Only by touching or hugging the tree, or leaning in very close and listening carefully, can visitors fully hear its whispered song.

Also in the exhibition, artworks bring viewers up close to underground mycelial networks, a holographic jellyfish and bioluminescent plankton that spell out “No blue, no green,” a quote from the marine biologist Sylvia Earle about the vital importance of marine ecosystems.

Altogether, the exhibition invites people to attune to the intelligence and voices of other species and, as Bertin said, to “stretch their sense of self to include the vastness of the ocean.”

At a closed marine park in the south of France, two orcas swim lonely circles in an aging tank, its walls caked with green algae. Their fate has become a drama in France, where the government must decide soon whether to transfer them to another marine park or release them into a sanctuary in the sea.

While the prospect of sending them into nature is appealing, evoking a sense of restitution for captive mammals, critics argue it is both experimental and unrealistic. These orcas — a female, Wikie, 25, and her son Keijo, 13 — were born in Marineland, the shuttered park in Antibes, and have never had to survive in the wild.

The park closed in January 2025 after 55 years, a victim of the coronavirus pandemic, which crushed attendance, and animal welfare legislation from 2021. The law banned most shows involving marine mammals like orcas, reducing the park’s appeal to tourists.

Since the closure, about 40 employees have come each day to care for the mammals — in addition to the orcas, there are 12 dolphins — at a cost of several million euros a year, according to Marineland.

That arrangement may soon be untenable. A report this year warned that the orcas’ tanks were suffering “progressive structural deterioration” despite maintenance. A major structural failure might prompt the park owners to euthanize the orcas, also known as killer whales.

Some accuse the government of dragging its feet in finding a solution.

“I just get this feeling that they’re just waiting for the orcas to die to solve the problem,” said Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an antipoaching and marine-conservation group. He is lobbying for European countries to finance the construction of a marine sanctuary in Europe.

Last June, Mr. Watson recalled, President Emmanuel Macron of France promised him on television that he would help find a solution for the orcas. “We haven’t heard anything since,” he said.

The French government declined an interview request but has released several updates about its efforts to find a solution. But “there’s no magical sanctuary,” said Mathieu Lefèvre, France’s deputy minister for ecological transition, during a Senate hearing in April.

There are two options. France can either transfer the orcas to a park similar to Marineland, most likely Loro Parque on the Spanish island of Tenerife. Or it can move them to an area at sea protected by nets, like a planned 100-acre open-water sanctuary in a cove on the Canadian coast, called the Whale Sanctuary Project.

This kind of sanctuary would allow handlers to care for the mammals in a natural setting, without public performances. That contrasts with the fate of Keiko, the orca who starred in the 1993 feature film “Free Willy.” He was later released into the wild, without human protection, and struggled to adapt.

Each option has its obstacles. The French government initially said its preference was to send the orcas to the Canadian site. But months later, the site isn’t ready and experts are still debating if it’s an appropriate habitat for the whales, derailing the French plan. And the Spanish authorities have blocked the orcas’ transfer to Spain, the French government said in December.

Even among marine experts and activists, there is no consensus about the best solution.

Moving captive-born orcas to natural environments doesn’t guarantee their well-being, according to critics of the Canadian plan, since the orcas’ ability to adapt to that new context is not assured. Such sites may be polluted or noisy, creating more stress for the orcas, and they are also expensive to maintain.

“These solutions appear more appealing to our human eyes than they do for the daily lives of these animals,” said Martin Böye, scientific director at Loro Parque Foundation, which already owns four orcas. Wikie and Keijo need interactions with other orcas in a familiar environment, he added.

Mr. Watson warned that because these orcas were raised in a Mediterranean climate, they would not be acclimated to a Canadian one. He also noted that the nearby shoreline used to have a gold mine, raising concerns about contaminated water — though the Whale Sanctuary Project says that its studies showed the site was safe.

“On paper, it’s a great solution, but in practice it’s impossible,” said Valentin Ducros, a spokesman for Marineland.

Supporters of the open-water option counter that parks have a vested interest in keeping orcas captive, since it makes it easier for them to breed new generations of killer whales, sustaining their business model.

Critics fault the French government for passing the law restricting marine shows without planning for the future of their former stars. Anne Chain-Larché, a senator who worked on the law, deplored that no impact assessment was produced and that decrees clarifying the law took too much time to be drafted for parks to adapt.

Now, the orcas are paying the price for that lack of foresight, said Marketa Schusterova, a founder of TideBreakers, a Canadian nonprofit that protects marine mammals.

“How can we be screaming, ‘Empty the tanks,’ and have nowhere for these animals to go?” Ms. Schusterova said.