Alexander Porter is an immersive director, inventor, and educator who specializes in using immersive technologies to explore art and science through human experience. Currently, he is making Topography, a multi-platform documentary on America's National Parks, and teaches his unique production approaches at Johns Hopkins at the first Immersive Media graduate program.
Extended CV with exhibitions, screenings, awards, publications →
Porter uses digital reality capture techniques, including photogrammetry, game engines, volumetric capture, and computer vision, to tell interactive stories in immersive formats. Out of his practice he defined the concept of 'volumetric filmmaking' by founding a leading immersive studio and creating the first and most widely used software for volumetric video production. He strives to apply these often alienating techniques to important and personal topics such as environmental justice, mental health, and supernatural experiences.
Awards include an Emmy award, an Emmy nomination, multiple Webby awards, and other festival awards for immersive work. Recent credits include Truth or Consequences (Co-Creator, Rotterdam, 2021), The Changing Same VR (EP, VF, Sundance, 2021), Blackout (Director, Tribeca Storyscapes, 2017), and the speculative Styles & Customs VR installation with DIS (Director, Carnegie Museum of Art, 2017). He was an inaugural member at New Inc and is a current resident at ONX.
Johns Hopkins University, Immersive Storytelling & Emerging Technologies Program | Lecturer
2022 - Present
Instructed immersive filmmaking for the world's inaugural degree program focused on immersive media and virtual reality, in the MA in Film and Media. Delivered comprehensive course on volumetric capture, 3D asset creation using Blender, and virtual production via Unreal in the course, "Virtual Production: A New Era of Filmmaking." Preparing to teach an experimental studio course, "Artificial Collaboration: AI & The Creative Process," on AI ethics and generative AI tools for 3D world creation.
Scatter | Founder, Immersive Director, Chief Product Officer
Mar 2014 - Apr 2021
Scatter is an award-winning immersive entertainment and creative software company. Scatter is recognized for pioneering the emerging language of Volumetric Filmmaking through its original volumetric film productions and its AR/VR creativity tools.
Scatter’s mission was to expand the boundaries of human expression, with a mission to define the emerging language of volumetric filmmaking. Scatter is proud to direct and curate quintessential volumetric films and to be the leader in democratizing the means for their creation.
Scatter's first product Depthkit is the most widely used toolkit for volumetric video capture. Depthkit enables any video creator to easily capture live-action performances as true to life three-dimensional performances, fusing the craft of filmmaking with the interactivity of video game design.
NYU Tish Interactive Telecommunications Program | Adjunct Professor **2014 - 2016 Computational Portraiture, a two credit course surveying recent artworks made with techniques such as photogrammetry, 3D scanning, and computer vision, and the research and tools used to create them.
How has the ubiquity of cameras changed our culture's relationship to images and altered photography as an artistic medium? By combining digital imaging, new sensing technology, algorithms, and metadata like geolocation, scientists and artists are discovering ways to synthesize new forms of vision out of vast data sets. Have these processes revealed new ways of seeing? If so, what new creative possibilities await?
Specular | Founder, Creative Director
2010 - 2014 (Closed)