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.

Directors' Statement

Directors'
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

2015

2018

2021

2021

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

Since 2015 Topography’s projects have taken shape across 0 milestones.

2015

2025

06.

Project
Timeline

2015

2018

2021

2021

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

Since 2015 Topography’s projects have taken shape across 0 milestones.

2015

2025

07.

Team

Led by Hannah Jayanti and Alexander Porter, Topography is a collaborative project that brings together a range of talented and interdisciplinary artists and ecologists working on the various formats in different capacities.

The core team includes:

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.

Directors'
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

2015

2018

2021

2021

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

Since 2015 Topography’s projects have taken shape across 0 milestones.

2015

2025

07.

Team

Led by Hannah Jayanti and Alexander Porter, Topography is a collaborative project that brings together a range of talented and interdisciplinary artists and ecologists working on the various formats in different capacities.

The core team includes:

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.

Directors' 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

2015

2018

2021

2021

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2023

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2024

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

2025

Since 2015 Topography’s projects have taken shape across 0 milestones.

2015

2025

07.

Team

Led by Hannah Jayanti and Alexander Porter, Topography is a collaborative project that brings together a range of talented and interdisciplinary artists and ecologists working on the various formats in different capacities.

The core team includes: