Topography is a multi-format documentary project that explores the histories, and futures, of land use. Set in and around North America'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.
Topography brings together a rare combination of documentary footage, archival, and the creative misuse of emerging technologies including photogrammetry, game engines, and interactivity. The project 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.
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. More information at www.topography.place.
Various formats are supported by Sundance Institute, Sandbox Films, Agog: The Immersive Media Institute, Catapult Film Fund, The Brown Institute Center for Media Innovation, Headlands Center for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Onassis ONX Studio, Floréal, UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art, Black Hills Area Community Foundation, Mesa Refuge Arts Residency, Jacob Burns Film Center, Ken Corday FDM Grow Grant, Agricultural Experiment Station Research Fellowship, University of California at Santa Cruz, Badlands National Park Arts Residency, Fire Island Artist Residency, National Park Arts Foundation, Center for Independent Documentary.