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
2021
2025
Various formats are supported by:
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
2021
2025
Various formats are supported by:
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
2021
2025
Various formats are supported by:








