About

01.

Summary

Topography is a multi-format documentary project that explores the histories, and futures, of land use.

Set in and around North American's increasingly imperiled public lands, the project spends time in the Badlands of South Dakota, California’s Death Valley, and Fire Island National Seashore in New York. From medicinal plant experts to paleontologists, rangers to ranchers, motel workers to tourists, environmental preservation to settler colonialism, seaside communities to seemingly desolate badlands—Topography fragments across time, species, scales, and histories to reveal how different perspectives shape the land and its futures.

02.

Formats

Topography spans documentary films, live-edited performances, immersive installations, artful video games, community publications, and interdisciplinary symposia. Formats symbiotically co-evolve in this uniquely iterative project, contributing material and learnings to each other. This allows the work to develop in community while reaching broad and varied audiences throughout the process.

03.

Elements

Topography brings together a rare combination of documentary footage, archival, and the creative misuse of emerging technologies including photogrammetry, game engines, and interactivity. We’ve gathered visible and hidden elements that make up these landscapes: documentary interviews and oral histories; ultrasonic, electromagnetic, and radio waves; field recordings, bat detectors, and contact microphones; mapping data including GIS, GPS and aerial laser scans; 3D scanned fossils, plants, and landforms; photographs, taxidermic animals, and herbaria; home movies, educational films, and images from wildlife cameras; the vast and the minuscule through microscopes and telescopes.

04.

Approach

Topography is created out of a collaborative place-based approach. Built on a practice of presence, we enter places without presupposing a story and instead build the narrative through listening deeply to what people choose to share. Through a slow and intentional process where we spend a long time in a place, projects emerge through relationships rather than preconceived ideas, while participants are centered as guides. This approach extends beyond production as we edit emergent narratives that are responsive to the material, create multiformat works, and build distribution strategies in conversation with the community.

05.

05.

Director’s Statement

Director’s
Statement

We—Hannah Jayanti and Alexander Porter—have collaborated for the last decade on multiformat projects that combine documentary with emerging technology alongside social practices. These range from feature documentaries such as ‘Truth or Consequences’ (Rotterdam, 2020), to groundbreaking virtual reality documentaries including ‘Blackout’ (Tribeca, 2017), to live-edited performances such as ‘Strata’ (Transmediale, 2023), to co-creating large scale community projects such as the free and public arts festival, ‘Meteoric’, which takes place annually in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Our work pushes formal and artistic boundaries around what documentary can be, while maintaining a deep ethical commitment. As an immersive director and artist, Alexander strives to redirect new and often alienating technologies towards environmental justice, mental health, and the human imagination. As a filmmaker, educator and organizer, Hannah explores the transformative possibilities of process-oriented and formally expansive documentaries. In our collaborations, Hannah shoots, edits and does sound, while Alexander creates immersive virtual worlds. We are grateful to collaborate with a small and extremely talented team of artists, designers, engineers, producers, scholars, and community organizers.

06.

Project Timeline

Project
Timeline

2021

2025

2015

Art Residency

2018

Art Residency

2021

Art Residency

2021

Performance iteration

2022

Art Residency

2022

UCSC Graduate Dean’s Travel Grant

2022

Magic Seed Grant

2022

Development Grant

2022

McEvoy Family Award for Film/Video

2022

Art Residency

2022

Work-in-progress showcase

2023

UCSC Department Travel Award

2023

Strata virtual landscape prototyped

2023

UCSC Graduate Dean’s Travel Grant

2023

Performance iteration

2023

Missile Command film premiere

2023

Strata Performance premiere

2023

UCSC Ken Corday FDM Grow Grant

2023

UCSC Summer Research Fellowship

2023

Production trip to Death Valley

2023

Strata Performance in Greece

2023

Strata Performance in Maine

2023

Support for Artists Grant

2024

Sandbox Fund Grant

2024

UCSC Arts Dean’s Fund for Excellence and Equity

2024

Strata Performance & Keynote

2024

UCSC Ken Corday FDM Grow Grant

2024

Research Fellowship

2024

Badlands film rough assembly edited

2024

Production trip to Badlands

2024

UCSC Department Travel Award

2024

UCSC Florence French Grant

2024

Strata Performance

2024

Art Residency

2025

Badlands film assembly editing

2025

Badlands film VFX design

2025

Strata Installation prototype

2025

UCSC Ken Corday Grant

2025

Black Hills Area Community Foundation Grant

2025

Badlands film editing residency

2025

Art Residency

Since 2021 all the projects that are part of Topography have accumulated 0 milestones.

2021

2025

About

01.

Summary

Topography is a multi-format documentary project that explores the histories, and futures, of land use.

Set in and around North American's increasingly imperiled public lands, the project spends time in the Badlands of South Dakota, California’s Death Valley, and Fire Island National Seashore in New York. From medicinal plant experts to paleontologists, rangers to ranchers, motel workers to tourists, environmental preservation to settler colonialism, seaside communities to seemingly desolate badlands—Topography fragments across time, species, scales, and histories to reveal how different perspectives shape the land and its futures.

02.

Formats

Topography spans documentary films, live-edited performances, immersive installations, artful video games, community publications, and interdisciplinary symposia. Formats symbiotically co-evolve in this uniquely iterative project, contributing material and learnings to each other. This allows the work to develop in community while reaching broad and varied audiences throughout the process.

03.

Elements

Topography brings together a rare combination of documentary footage, archival, and the creative misuse of emerging technologies including photogrammetry, game engines, and interactivity. We’ve gathered visible and hidden elements that make up these landscapes: documentary interviews and oral histories; ultrasonic, electromagnetic, and radio waves; field recordings, bat detectors, and contact microphones; mapping data including GIS, GPS and aerial laser scans; 3D scanned fossils, plants, and landforms; photographs, taxidermic animals, and herbaria; home movies, educational films, and images from wildlife cameras; the vast and the minuscule through microscopes and telescopes.

04.

Approach

Topography is created out of a collaborative place-based approach. Built on a practice of presence, we enter places without presupposing a story and instead build the narrative through listening deeply to what people choose to share. Through a slow and intentional process where we spend a long time in a place, projects emerge through relationships rather than preconceived ideas, while participants are centered as guides. This approach extends beyond production as we edit emergent narratives that are responsive to the material, create multiformat works, and build distribution strategies in conversation with the community.

05.

Director’s
Statement

We—Hannah Jayanti and Alexander Porter—have collaborated for the last decade on multiformat projects that combine documentary with emerging technology alongside social practices. These range from feature documentaries such as ‘Truth or Consequences’ (Rotterdam, 2020), to groundbreaking virtual reality documentaries including ‘Blackout’ (Tribeca, 2017), to live-edited performances such as ‘Strata’ (Transmediale, 2023), to co-creating large scale community projects such as the free and public arts festival, ‘Meteoric’, which takes place annually in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Our work pushes formal and artistic boundaries around what documentary can be, while maintaining a deep ethical commitment. As an immersive director and artist, Alexander strives to redirect new and often alienating technologies towards environmental justice, mental health, and the human imagination. As a filmmaker, educator and organizer, Hannah explores the transformative possibilities of process-oriented and formally expansive documentaries. In our collaborations, Hannah shoots, edits and does sound, while Alexander creates immersive virtual worlds. We are grateful to collaborate with a small and extremely talented team of artists, designers, engineers, producers, scholars, and community organizers.

06.

Project Timeline

2021

2025

2015

Art Residency

2018

Art Residency

2021

Art Residency

2021

Performance iteration

2022

Art Residency

2022

UCSC Graduate Dean’s Travel Grant

2022

Magic Seed Grant

2022

Development Grant

2022

McEvoy Family Award for Film/Video

2022

Art Residency

2022

Work-in-progress showcase

2023

UCSC Department Travel Award

2023

Strata virtual landscape prototyped

2023

UCSC Graduate Dean’s Travel Grant

2023

Performance iteration

2023

Missile Command film premiere

2023

Strata Performance premiere

2023

UCSC Ken Corday FDM Grow Grant

2023

UCSC Summer Research Fellowship

2023

Production trip to Death Valley

2023

Strata Performance in Greece

2023

Strata Performance in Maine

2023

Support for Artists Grant

2024

Sandbox Fund Grant

2024

UCSC Arts Dean’s Fund for Excellence and Equity

2024

Strata Performance & Keynote

2024

UCSC Ken Corday FDM Grow Grant

2024

Research Fellowship

2024

Badlands film rough assembly edited

2024

Production trip to Badlands

2024

UCSC Department Travel Award

2024

UCSC Florence French Grant

2024

Strata Performance

2024

Art Residency

2025

Badlands film assembly editing

2025

Badlands film VFX design

2025

Strata Installation prototype

2025

UCSC Ken Corday Grant

2025

Black Hills Area Community Foundation Grant

2025

Badlands film editing residency

2025

Art Residency

Since 2021 all the projects that are part of Topography have accumulated 0 milestones.

2021

2025

About

01.

Summary

Topography is a multi-format documentary project that explores the histories, and futures, of land use.

Set in and around North American's increasingly imperiled public lands, the project spends time in the Badlands of South Dakota, California’s Death Valley, and Fire Island National Seashore in New York. From medicinal plant experts to paleontologists, rangers to ranchers, motel workers to tourists, environmental preservation to settler colonialism, seaside communities to seemingly desolate badlands—Topography fragments across time, species, scales, and histories to reveal how different perspectives shape the land and its futures.

02.

Formats

Topography spans documentary films, live-edited performances, immersive installations, artful video games, community publications, and interdisciplinary symposia. Formats symbiotically co-evolve in this uniquely iterative project, contributing material and learnings to each other. This allows the work to develop in community while reaching broad and varied audiences throughout the process.

03.

Elements

Topography brings together a rare combination of documentary footage, archival, and the creative misuse of emerging technologies including photogrammetry, game engines, and interactivity. We’ve gathered visible and hidden elements that make up these landscapes: documentary interviews and oral histories; ultrasonic, electromagnetic, and radio waves; field recordings, bat detectors, and contact microphones; mapping data including GIS, GPS and aerial laser scans; 3D scanned fossils, plants, and landforms; photographs, taxidermic animals, and herbaria; home movies, educational films, and images from wildlife cameras; the vast and the minuscule through microscopes and telescopes.

04.

Approach

Topography is created out of a collaborative place-based approach. Built on a practice of presence, we enter places without presupposing a story and instead build the narrative through listening deeply to what people choose to share. Through a slow and intentional process where we spend a long time in a place, projects emerge through relationships rather than preconceived ideas, while participants are centered as guides. This approach extends beyond production as we edit emergent narratives that are responsive to the material, create multiformat works, and build distribution strategies in conversation with the community.

05.

Director’s Statement

We—Hannah Jayanti and Alexander Porter—have collaborated for the last decade on multiformat projects that combine documentary with emerging technology alongside social practices. These range from feature documentaries such as ‘Truth or Consequences’ (Rotterdam, 2020), to groundbreaking virtual reality documentaries including ‘Blackout’ (Tribeca, 2017), to live-edited performances such as ‘Strata’ (Transmediale, 2023), to co-creating large scale community projects such as the free and public arts festival, ‘Meteoric’, which takes place annually in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Our work pushes formal and artistic boundaries around what documentary can be, while maintaining a deep ethical commitment. As an immersive director and artist, Alexander strives to redirect new and often alienating technologies towards environmental justice, mental health, and the human imagination. As a filmmaker, educator and organizer, Hannah explores the transformative possibilities of process-oriented and formally expansive documentaries. In our collaborations, Hannah shoots, edits and does sound, while Alexander creates immersive virtual worlds. We are grateful to collaborate with a small and extremely talented team of artists, designers, engineers, producers, scholars, and community organizers.

06.

Project Timeline

2021

2025

2015

Art Residency

2018

Art Residency

2021

Art Residency

2021

Performance iteration

2022

Art Residency

2022

UCSC Graduate Dean’s Travel Grant

2022

Magic Seed Grant

2022

Development Grant

2022

McEvoy Family Award for Film/Video

2022

Art Residency

2022

Work-in-progress showcase

2023

UCSC Department Travel Award

2023

Strata virtual landscape prototyped

2023

UCSC Graduate Dean’s Travel Grant

2023

Performance iteration

2023

Missile Command film premiere

2023

Strata Performance premiere

2023

UCSC Ken Corday FDM Grow Grant

2023

UCSC Summer Research Fellowship

2023

Production trip to Death Valley

2023

Strata Performance in Greece

2023

Strata Performance in Maine

2023

Support for Artists Grant

2024

Sandbox Fund Grant

2024

UCSC Arts Dean’s Fund for Excellence and Equity

2024

Strata Performance & Keynote

2024

UCSC Ken Corday FDM Grow Grant

2024

Research Fellowship

2024

Badlands film rough assembly edited

2024

Production trip to Badlands

2024

UCSC Department Travel Award

2024

UCSC Florence French Grant

2024

Strata Performance

2024

Art Residency

2025

Badlands film assembly editing

2025

Badlands film VFX design

2025

Strata Installation prototype

2025

UCSC Ken Corday Grant

2025

Black Hills Area Community Foundation Grant

2025

Badlands film editing residency

2025

Art Residency

Since 2021 all the projects that are part of Topography have accumulated 0 milestones.

2021

2025