Melisa Achoko Allela is a Nairobi-based creative technologist, lecturer and researcher. She merges her background in interactive media, graphic design and animation in artistic and research projects that explore the affordances of new and emerging technologies to position how they can be used to digitize storytelling experiences imbued with elements of traditional African oral storytelling.
Allela is a lecturer at the Technical University of Kenya and cofounder of the interactive media studio LESOStories. Her main motivation is to preserve and celebrate the rich cultural heritage of African storytelling while also using innovative methods to share it with a new and wider audience. She holds a PhD in design from the Technical University, and an MA and BA in design from the University of Nairobi.
Among other achievements, Allela is winner of Digital Lab Africa 2020 Award (Immersive Realities category), is an Electric South 2019 Fellow, a recipient of the 2019 HEVA Cultural Heritage Seed Fund and a 2018 Mawazo PhD scholar. She looks forward to the tipping point moment for African women in tech and their increased participation in the fields of animation and interactive media.
Allela’s fellowship project—Songa, from the Swahili word “move”—explores the digital mediation of performance and non-verbal communication that plays a key role in narrative development in traditional African oral storytelling. This project gives prominence to physically embodied experiences that cannot be adequately conveyed in linear media. It entails the creation of a database of movement forms drawn from curated storytelling performances.
Orature, or oral storytelling, places a strong emphasis on performative techniques that come to life most effectively when conveyed through both spoken and non-verbal means within a live social setting. It is “the creative and imaginative art of composition that relies on verbal art for communication and that culminates in performance”. Consequently, linear media recordings of oral storytelling experiences often fall short of capturing the immersive and interactive essence found in live storytelling sessions. This Wintersession course invites students to explore motion capture through the lens of traditional oral storytelling practices from indigenous communities. Students will actively identify the unique and distinguishing features of orature, and leverage their own cultural backgrounds, personal perspectives, and idiosyncrasies to create motion capture data that can be used in crafting an interactive digital retelling of a folktale. Using software and equipment in the Movement Lab students will plan segments for oral storytelling, record verbal story content in their own voice, prepare a character based on their 3D scans, set up mocap equipment, record their movement, clean-up and apply the movement data to a character, and finally compile the individual segments into a digital retelling that refracts one tale through diverse facets of embodied expression. Through in-class practical activities, daily assignments, demonstrations, screenings and suggested reading, students will acquire new appreciation for orature as well as experimentation with motion capture tools that can support new retellings of works of orature in digital media.
Elective
Spring 2024 Courses
FAV 5115-01 - DIGITAL PRACTICES
LevelUndergraduate
UnitFilm/Animation/Video
Subject Film/Animation/Video
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
FormatStudio
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date
FAV 5115-01
DIGITAL PRACTICES
LevelUndergraduate
UnitFilm/Animation/Video
Subject Film/Animation/Video
PeriodSpring 2024
Credits3
FormatStudio
ModeIn-Person
Start and End2024-02-15 to 2024-05-24
Times: M | 1:10 PM - 6:10 PMInstructor(s): Melisa Achoko AllelaLocation(s): Auditorium, Room 525Enrolled / Capacity: 13Status: Open
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This course identifies core principles of digital production, to enable students to continually adapt to the ever-changing world of software. Students research and produce artworks that demonstrate their understanding of these principles. This primary knowledge includes digital film and video formats, project asset management, compression techniques, understanding program interface design, color spaces, channel mixing and filters, and the creation and use of extra channels (such as alpha and depth).
Estimated Cost of Materials: $30.00
Please contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register.
