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), Science & Justice Research Center (Santa Cruz, CA, 2023), Plasmata (Ioannina, Greece, 2023), Headlands Center for the Arts (California, USA, 2022), 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, New York State Council on the Arts.
Credits
Alexander Porter & Hannah Jayanti | director/producer/performer
Alexander Porter | creative direction, 3D capture
Hannah Jayanti | (live) editor, cinematography
Katayoun Dibamehr, Floréal Films | co-producer
Juan Pedro Agurcia | associate producer
Jacob Burke | game developer
Michele Graffieti | designer
Francesco Fiondella | science communication advisor
Christian Knutson | field producer
