Alla

Author

Workshop: Writing about Audiovisual and Ephemeral Objects

What’s the best way to describe colours? How do colours get their names? The above example is from Abraham Werner’s 1821 “Nomenclature of Colours”.

I first developed and ran the workshop “Writing about Audiovisual and Ephemeral Objects” for graduate students at Northwestern University in 2012. The workshop focused on strategies that scholars can use in note-taking, describing, and writing about objects that are often inaccessible after one viewing. We also looked at different ways of making ephemeral objects come alive in the mind of the reader, who may never get a chance to see them at all. Continue reading “Workshop: Writing about Audiovisual and Ephemeral Objects” →

Wednesday

Research: Visiting the Len Lye Archive, New Plymouth

A photograph of just a few of Len Lye’s animation stencils held at the archive.

September 12, 2012 was my last day of research at the Len Lye Archive, maintained by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, New Zealand. Len Lye’s ideas about the role of “kinaesthetic empathy” in art-making profoundly shaped how I think about the history of animation. As a Visiting Researcher at the archive, I got to study the documents and working tools of this pioneering experimental animator.

Continue reading “Research: Visiting the Len Lye Archive, New Plymouth” →

Wednesday

New Website, In Progress

June 30, 2016: I finally have time to migrate my website from an overpriced (and poorly managed) web builder to WordPress. This is just a temporary page (and template) up until I gradually move all of my previous posts and update new items.

Thursday

Alla Gadassik (PhD, Northwestern University) is a media scholar, curator, and lifelong cinephile. Her main area of expertise is animated media — covering a wide range of historical, geographic, and production contexts. She also researches and writes about histories of cinematography, film editing, and experimental cinema. Alla is an Associate Professor of Media History and Theory at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECUAD), where she founded the Animate Materials Workshop. She lives and works in Vancouver on unceded lands of Coast Salish people: Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam).