Headlands prototype
A 2025 installation at Headlands Center for the Arts tested projection, visitor interaction, and the real-time system.
Strata / Installation
Strata is an immersive installation that transforms the Badlands of South Dakota into an explorable landscape.
- Period
- 2023–present
- Status
- In Development
- Form
- Generative documentary installation
environment studyThe project
Strata (Installation) is a generative documentary environment in development, set inside a fifty-meter 3D scan of the Badlands. The current museum proposal maps that terrain across full-wall and floor projection, spatial sound, a sculptural landform screen, and a volumetric display.
As you walk, terrain appears beneath your feet. Recorded walkers reveal other parts of the landscape along their routes. Their voices remain tied to positions on those routes while footage, archives, and scanned objects surface nearby. The work is built around careful noticing. Close observation is rewarded as the landscape becomes a tapestry of stories, memories, observations, and buried histories. Because the installation responds to movement and duration, no two experiences will be the same. The final installation has not yet premiered.
Context
We began Badlands with a difficult documentary premise: how do you make the land, rather than a single charismatic person or issue, the protagonist? The place holds Lakota histories, paleontology, wildlife management, ranching, nuclear weapons, plant knowledge, and many forms of work and observation. We didn't want to organize all of that around one person or blend those positions into one voice. The landscape was the thing they had in common.
Strata came from trying to give that structure a physical form. In 2021 I began imagining each walk through the same patch of ground as a chain of moments: one person's cone of perception, with a voice attached to the route. Several paths could cross without resolving into one view. I called that difficulty the vertigo of trying to co-mingle these views.
Hannah proposed that each path leave an accumulating imprint in the terrain. I answered that the more points of view we had, the more vision the work might have. She trusted the strange premise and helped us carry it into production. In the installation, visitors move among those situated accounts. The land is the organizing presence: the place where voices, histories, and different scales of time meet, overlap, and remain distinct.
Process studies
Reconstructing a Patch of the Badlands
This study isolates the virtual ground shared by the Strata Performance and Installation. The route, voice, and reveal systems are treated separately.
01 / 03
Alexander Porter — 3D Capture · Christian Knutson — Field Photography
- 01 / Starting point
How do we make a densely detailed 3D capture of this landscape?
- 02 / How it worked
We photographed the area systematically, building overlapping coverage rather than a series of individual views. Christian Knutson helped with the field photography; together we made more than 5,000 images across the fifty-meter site. I processed the photographs through photogrammetry in sections, checked the resulting geometry against the source imagery, and combined the sections into a navigable model. I then prepared the model for real-time use in Unreal Engine, balancing surface detail against what the computers could draw continuously. The result became the shared virtual ground for the Performance and Installation. Recording the walkers’ routes, positions, and synchronized voices required a separate system, described in the next study.
- 03 / What it opened
The model gave the live camera terrain it could navigate in real time. Recorded routes, spatial voices, archives, and reveal effects could then be placed at measured positions within the same fifty-meter area.
Mapping Voices to Walked Routes
For Strata, people described the Badlands while walking through the same fifty-meter area at different times.
diagram
debug viewAlexander Porter — Route-recording Toolset / Unreal Engine Integration · Hannah Jayanti and Christian Knutson — Onsite Production
- 01 / Starting point
How could I keep a person's voice attached to the path they walked?
- 02 / How it worked
I mounted an iPhone running a custom tool on each person's body to record their location as they walked. A lavalier wireless microphone recorded their voice at the same time, and a GoPro recorded the walk as a witness camera. Back in the studio, I synchronized the location, sound, and video tracks, then used the recorded locations to build the route animation in Unreal Engine. With the tracks aligned, each voice remained attached to positions along the original walk. A diagram shows several walks as separate dotted routes across the same fifty-meter area.
- 03 / What it opened
The installation can place several recorded walks within the same fifty-meter area. Each voice follows its own route, so observations made at different points remain attached to distinct positions even when several accounts occupy the same reconstructed landscape.
Making the Ground Appear
The installation uses one reveal system for recorded walkers and present visitors. Each is treated as a point in the Strata world, with a radius determining how much terrain appears around it. Several reveal regions can overlap, but never become more than fully visible. The wall projections are views into that same simulation, rather than a second wall-specific mask.
diagramAlexander Porter — reveal-system design and implementation.
- 01 / Starting point
How could recorded walks and present visitors reveal only the part of the landscape nearest to them?
- 02 / How it worked
I built one reveal system into the Strata world simulation. Each recorded walker supplies a point of origin; Walker Radius sets the reveal region around that point. The live camera is treated as another walker, and Player Mask Size sets the same radius around a visitor's position. When several masks overlap, the reveal remains capped at one: fully visible. The wall projections show views of this same simulation. The 2023 tests use the same basic code, with later improvements.
- 03 / What it opened
Recorded walks and present visitors can expose the fifty-meter scan through the same spatial rule. I am now interested in a second reveal for a future installation version: as someone approaches a wall, their proximity—and possibly the time they spend there—could uncover footage, Gaussian splats, and other material related to the nearest walker.
Behind the scenes
Building the ground the work depends on
This production film documents how more than 5,000 photographs became the navigable Badlands terrain shared by the Strata forms. The Process Studies above explain the decisions behind that method.
Installation configurations
Touring installation
A modular configuration is being developed for festivals and galleries, using screens and surfaces that can adapt to different rooms.
Museum-scale installation
The current proposal maps a darkened gallery to a fifty-meter patch of the Badlands through full-wall and floor projection, spatial sound, sculptural terrain, and a volumetric display.
exhibition model
installation visualizationMy role
I direct, produce, and serve as virtual cinematographer. My work focuses on the spatial and generative system described in the current proposal.
Supported by
- Residency2022
- Institutional Support
- Funder
Supported by the New York State Council on the Arts through UnionDocs
2023 - Institutional Support2022
- Residency
Developed with support from the Badlands National Park Arts Residency
2021–2022 - Residency2022
- Institutional Support
Selected credits
- Alexander Porter
- Director / Producer / Virtual Cinematographer
- Avi Amar
- Immersive Co-Producer
- Christian Knutson
- Field Producer
- Delfina Vincenti
- Associate Producer
- Hannah Jayanti
- Co-Director / Producer / Cinematographer / Editor / Sound
- Jacob Burke
- Game Developer
- Juan Pedro Agurcia
- Associate Producer
- Katayoun Dibamehr
- Immersive Co-Producer
- Linus Gruszewski
- Architect
- Michele Graffieti
- Designer