PORTS

PORTS is an ongoing artistic research and moving-image project exploring how possible futures become perceptible in the present. Set in a world transformed by climate change, autonomous technologies and new forms of collective life, it combines speculative fiction with real locations. Its current iteration is a location-based 360° film experience in which viewers encounter a fictional future superimposed onto the physical environment they are standing in. It deliberately omits the usual dystopian clichés. 

The narrative's backdrop are the effects of the impending climate catastrophe and the breakthrough of machine learning and artificial intelligence in almost all areas. In PORTS, intelligent technological systems have taken over all relevant sectors, i.e. production, logistics, development, etc., and autonomously decide the fate of the world.

Humans live alongside them, tolerated and without major hardship, but stripped of all their usual power over the planet.

PORTS @ UnrealityTV

PORTS @ Youtube

In 2026, PORTS entered a new development phase with funding from MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein. Together with a small film and development team, I am producing a prototype for a location-based XR/AR film experience in the Hamburg harbour area. The work combines 360° moving image, spatial sound, CGI and a browser-based mobile interface, allowing viewers to encounter fictional scenes from the PORTS world at the locations where they were filmed.

The prototype is expeted to be finished in the second half of 2026.

The following material is showing previous explorations of the PORTS universe, mainly from the 4 web video episodes.

In Summer 2024 a PORTS-themed exhibition took place at ZOLLO. In cooperation with Julian Sippel I created a space resembling the overall aestethics of the project that visitors could walk into.

Centerpiece of the exhibit was a persicope-like installation that offered a 360° view into the PORTS world, augmented over video footage of the real surroundings.

PORTS began as a simple proof-of-concept situation in which the sole goal was to produce something challenging (lots of new stuff to learn) but yet achievable. Since production for more advanced ideas is both expensive and not easily done alone, more focus went to world builing and other behind-the-scenes things.