What is Topography?

Topography is a multi-platform documentary exploring how humans relate to, and separate ourselves from, “nature”. Set in and around US National Parks, Topography fragments across time, species, scales, and histories to reveal how different perspectives shape the land and its futures. The project includes films, immersive experiences, interactive websites, performances, and installations. 

What is this site?

This site explores Topography: Badlands, the portion of the project set in Badlands National Park in South Dakota. The pages, images and thoughts gathered here are from two and half months spent in the Badlands as Artists-In-Residence. We make no claim to be experts, or to be representing a complete picture of the place, people, and more-than-humans. This meandering compilation claims to be exactly what it is: a loose and provocative grouping of things we saw, heard, read, and learned during our time there.  

How to use this site?

This site is based on concepts at the heart of Topography: interdependence, indeterminacy, place based storytelling, and non-linearity. This site intentionally presents all of the materials as relational, with overlapping tags that build associations as you move through the site. You’ll notice words below the thumbnails - these are the themes that we understand this image/idea to be rotating around, what we’re calling a “tag”. If you click on an image, you’ll find an anecdote, a quote or some local history that the image evokes or originates from. If you scroll down, you’ll see other images with similar tags. If you click directly on a tag, you’ll be taken to a page that explores that idea, and also includes thumbnails of images that have that tag. The intention is a corkscrew experience where meaning gets built over time based on where you click, what you discover, and what associations you create. 

Topography is a collaboration between Hannah Jayanti & Alexander Porter