portals to estuary futures
It combines digital media and a physical binoculars to help audiences engage with coastal resilience and environmental futures.
What conflicts appear between economic models and ecological health?
mobile binoculars version version here → [<https://nicetrails.com/binoculars>](<https://nicetrails.com/binoculars>)
Artist: Nicetrails, a studio prototyping with emergent technologies, led by Bernat Cuní a Barcelona-based artist combining digital fabrication, AR, AI, and 3D to explore the social, environmental, economical and political consequences of technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcvfrmPOKBk
The binoculars show hypothetical constructions developed through research, artistic reflection and the voices of estuarine communities.
Each future imagines possible transformations of the estuaries, inspired by themes such as sea-level rise, water quality and changes in economic activity. These transformations take material form through different objects.
OUR ESTUARIES
The Tagus and Sado estuaries are transitional environments where river freshwater mixes with the salt water of the Atlantic. Salt marshes, tidal flats, salt pans, channels and seagrass meadows are among the habitats that feed, shelter and provide nursery grounds for numerous species. These ecosystems provide a range of ecosystem services, including carbon storage and shoreline protection (ICNF, n.d.-a; ICNF, n.d.-b; Freitas et al., 2024). Both estuaries are designated Nature Reserves: the Tagus Estuary Nature Reserve (RNET) was established in 1976 and the Sado Estuary Nature Reserve (RNES) in 1980.
In the Tagus, tens of thousands of waterbirds find food and rest during their migrations. The pied avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta) is one of the Nature Reserve's emblematic migratory species. The Sado is home to Portugal's only resident population of common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), as well as numerous species of fish and molluscs of considerable biological and commercial interest. Both estuaries are important wetlands for waterbirds in Portugal (ICNF, n.d.-a; ICNF, n.d.-b).
A wide range of economic activities coexist in these important estuaries, including port operations, shipping, fishing, aquaculture, agriculture and tourism. They are places where ecological wealth and economic activity meet and, at times, come into conflict.
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