wetland role-playing game to activate pluriversal perspectives

wetland.games is an agent-based platform that aims to foster multi-species perspectives among users in environmental planning and support multi-natural intelligence. It is a collaborative effort between the LUMA curatorial team of Martin Guinard and Salma Mochtari, scientist Raphaël Mathevet (CNRS EPHE CEFE, France), artists Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas (MIT, USA), programmers Terry Kang and Thomas Lee Harriett (USA), with design in collaboration with NODE Berlin. URL: wetland.games

Envisioned as an update and adaptation project of the ButorStar* role-playing game and based on the interdisciplinary scientific works on Camargue marsh in France, wetland.games simulates the impacts of diverse factors: sea level and salinity dynamics, volatile climate and economy informing decisions made by various “stakeholders” of the wetland, i.e. farmers, fishers, livestock breeders, reed harvesters, hunters, conservationists, but also birds and plants, allowing players to explore the “pluriverse”, to use the anthropologist Arturo Escobar’s expression.


Developed as educational tool that could be enacted as performance, the game emphasizes entanglement of landscape and humans and their inseparability in maintaining an equilibrium in between autochthonous and invasive, preservation and economy.

wetland.games creates a continuum of learning from other species, that crosses the traditional boundaries between disciplines (geography, ecology, economy, anthropology) and allows participants to conduct multipurpose experiments that contribute to their understanding of socio-ecosystems and sustainability respecting the plurality of wetland beings’ perspectives.

wetland.games is part of the Shadow Biosphere Observatory – a year-long project supported by LUMA Arles, La Saison de la Lituanie en France 2024, the Creative Interdisciplinary New European Bauhaus – NEB Research Centre, Vilnius Academy of Arts, and MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology.


The project is part of the Season of Lithuania in France 2024. The Season is organized by the Lithuanian culture Institute and the French Institute in Paris.

*ButorStar has been developed in the context of a LIFE-Nature European Programme (2001-2005) aiming to improve reedbed management for the conservation of a vulnerable heron, the Eurasian Bittern, by the interdisciplinary team of Raphaël Mathevet, CNRS CEFE, Tour du Valat; Christophe Le Page, CIRAD, Michel Etienne, INRAE, Gaëtan Lefebvre, Tour du Valat; Sophie Proréol, Amis des Marais du Vigueirat; Brigitte Poulin, Tour du Valat; Guillaume Gigot, CIRAD, CNRS CEFE; André Mauchamp, Tour du Valat, F. Mesléard, Tour du Valat.

Photos: Bertrand Stofleth, Urbonas Studio

More about wetland.games (in Lithuanian):
https://www.lrt.lt/naujienos/kultura/12/2447731/prancuzu-mokslininkai-ir-mit-menininkai-urbonai-ispletojo-vaidmenu-zaidima
https://www.delfi.lt/kultura/naujienos/menininkai-nomeda-ir-gediminas-urbonai-sukure-zaidima-pelkems-gelbeti-120074718
https://www.vz.lt/laisvalaikis/2025/01/02/kaip-nomeda-ir-gediminas-urbonai-pelkes-gelbejo
https://artnews.lt/menininkai-n-ir-g-urbonai-kartu-su-mokslininkais-sukure-universalu-ekosistemini-samoninguma-ugdanti-zaidima-117600