Traverse a vast terrain without leaving a tiny patch of land.
Strata | Documentary Performance
40-60 mins, premiered at Transmediale 2023
Strata is a live-edited, improvisational documentary performance. Each iteration is a unique call and response between a virtual landscape with documentary footage.
Set in a small 3D scanned region of the Badlands of South Dakota, viewers piece together a chorus of diverse perspectives while performers construct it live. Voices carry you from paleontology to foraging, wildlife management to nuclear arms and geopolitics, and indigenous herbalism to cattle ranching. Strata layers histories, economics, natural sciences, deep time, and personal anecdotes within a unique immersive landscape that invites you into a meditation on the complex histories embedded in all lands and how profoundly human perspectives shape and define its future.
Strata can be shown in various formats, ranging from movie theaters to a multi-channel installation for galleries or museums. We are currently developing a companion immersive installation and a distributable documentary art game.
Strata has been performed at Transmediale (Berlin, Germany, 2023), Camden International Film Festival (Maine, USA, 2023), Plasmata (Ioannina, Greece, 2023), First Look at the Museum of the Moving Image (Queens, NY, 2021).
Strata is part of the multi-format documentary project, Topography. Supported by The Brown Institute for Media Innovation, Headlands Center for the Arts Residency and Project Space, Badlands National Park Arts Residency.
Director/Producer: Alexander Porter & Hannah Jayanti
Creative Direction, 3D Capture: Alexander Porter
(Live) Editor, Cinematography: Hannah Jayanti
Game Developer: Jacob Burke
Immersive Producer Consultant: Juan Pedro Agurcia
Visual Design Consultant: Michele Graffieti
Science Communication Advisor: Francesco Fiondella
Field Producer: Christian Knutson
