Ulysses’ Gates, the first chapter of Climate-tides, was presented in Venice at the Art Gallery of Caffè In Paradiso on the occasion of the opening of the 2026 Venice Biennale.
The presentation marked the first public encounter with the project, which brings together art, science and technology to explore Venice’s relationship with water, tides, climate change and infrastructures of protection. The event was met with great interest and participation from the public, opening a shared space of reflection around one of the most symbolic and urgent questions of the lagoon city: how to listen to environmental transformation before it becomes emergency.
Ulysses’ Gates stems from a cultural proposition by Umberto Vattani: to interpret the theme of the 2026 Biennale Arte, In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh, by transforming the sound and presence of the MOSE, Venice’s invisible defence against rising sea levels, into an artistic experience. From this initial intuition, the dialogue among the authors opened into the broader framework of Climate-tides, an art–science series dedicated to tides, climate change and new forms of listening to nature.
Created by Filippo Gregoretti, Hiroaki Kitano and Vittorio Loreto, the work transforms more than a century of lagoon history, tidal records, environmental signals and data connected to the MOSE system into sound, music and generative images. The project does not treat data as neutral information alone, nor as aesthetic material in itself. Rather, it uses artistic and technological languages to make environmental change perceptible, meaningful and collectively shareable.
During the presentation, Hiroaki Kitano and Vittorio Loreto introduced the scientific and conceptual dimensions of the work, addressing the role of artificial intelligence, complex systems, environmental data and technological infrastructures in understanding transformation. Filippo Gregoretti presented the artistic and generative dimension of the project, showing how data, thresholds and movements of the lagoon can become a sonic and visual composition: not only a representation of environmental change, but an experience of listening.
At the centre of Ulysses’ Gates is Venice itself: a city built on water and within water, which for centuries has not lived against the sea, but in dialogue with it. Its history is made of fragile balances, thresholds and adaptations. Today, however, that rhythm is changing. The challenge is no longer only the sudden storm or the exceptional event of acqua alta, but a slower and more continuous transformation: rising sea levels, climate change and the increasing frequency with which nature exceeds the thresholds that humankind had learned to recognise.
In this narrative, the MOSE is not presented as a final victory over the sea, but as a threshold. Hidden on the seabed and rising only when the threat becomes concrete, it embodies a form of protection that does not erase fragility. It intervenes, restores balance, and then disappears. For this reason, Ulysses’ Gates evokes not domination, but vigilance; not conquest, but adaptation. Protecting Venice does not mean denying the sea. It means continuing to listen to it.
The cultural and narrative framework of the project has been developed with the contribution of Milena Di Canio, who has accompanied Climate-tides / Ulysses’ Gates since its early stages, working on the language through which the project connects art, science, environmental data, Venice, listening and climate awareness. A special thank you also goes to Yoko Honjo for her support in nurturing the cultural dimension of the project and helping it take shape across its different stages.
With Ulysses’ Gates, Venice is not only the site of the work. It is its interlocutor: the body that breathes, resists and adapts. The first chapter of Climate-tides opens from this fragile and powerful image, inviting us to rethink the relationship between civilisation and nature through attention, care and listening.
The sea becomes a voice.
Data become a way of listening.