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, performers construct a documentary live on stage. The performance, which is different every time, brings together a rare combination of photogrammetry, game engines, augmented reality, and documentary audio. These intertwine to create a unique immersive landscape filled with a tapestry of stories, observations, memories, and buried histories. As the performers move through the landscape listening to figures describing the place, viewers are carried from paleontology to foraging, wildlife management to nuclear arms and geopolitics, and indigenous herbalism to cattle ranching. The experience layers histories, economics, natural sciences, deep time, and personal anecdotes in order to invite audiences into a meditation on the complex histories embedded in all lands and how profoundly human perspectives shape and define their futures.
Strata has been performed at Transmediale (Berlin, Germany, 2023), Camden International Film Festival (Maine, USA, 2023), Science & Justice Research Center (Santa Cruz, CA, 2023), Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center (Cambridge, MA, 2024), 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 | director, producer, performer, 3D capture
Hannah Jayanti | co-director, producer, performer, (live) editor, dp
Katayoun Dibamehr, Floréal Films | co-producer
Juan Pedro Agurcia | associate producer
Delfina Vincenti | associate producer
Jacob Burke | game developer
Michele Graffieti | designer
Christian Knutson | field producer
