Wits School of Arts (ETDs)

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Start date: 2000Subject: search.filters.subject.SDG-17: Partnerships for the goals

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Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Protecting Independent Local Contemporary Fashion: An exploration of policies that shaped the South African fashion industry and approaches to protect local independent South African contemporary fashion as cultural heritage
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Atkinson, Kendall Lee; Desando, Marcus
    Local independent South African contemporary fashion designers face a challenging market when entering the South African fashion industry to sell their products. Local independent contemporary designers are forced to compete with the overwhelmingly popular international fast fashion brands that populate malls nationwide with little to no support. This has created challenging and convoluted entry points for local independent contemporary designers and continuous challenges to stay in the market. Independent local contemporary fashion designers offer something different than chain stores: a specific creative and cultural design perspective. People are naturally influenced by their environments and identity; therefore, local independent contemporary fashion designers instinctively design from their cultural perspective. We are losing aspects of cultural identity and history by not supporting or protecting local independent contemporary fashion designers’ businesses. This paper investigates the challenges both the designers and consumers face in the industry and different methods of protecting local independent South African contemporary fashion designers to preserve their art and support the local fashion sector. The research methodology used was hermeneutical phenomenology, and my experience as a consumer of the South African fashion industry was not omitted due to the study method. Five interviews were conducted, three individuals participated in photovoice, and 84 participants were surveyed. The results show evidence of the innate interconnection of culture and cultural heritage with South African contemporary designers and the challenges that the designers face due to policy decisions by the South African government. In order to protect local contemporary fashion designers to allow them the opportunity for success, fashion should be declared as a cultural heritage by the South African government.
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    Unheard Narratives: theatre-making that celebrates Coloured stories
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Claasen, Estee Lauren
    In South Africa, the Coloured ethnic group is considered as either as a creation of apartheid or as an indistinguishable group (Mills, 2018). This research challenges these concepts and intends to adopt the principles that guide Playback Theatre, such as fluid sculpture and sharing stories with an audience present. Playback Theatre aims to honour each teller by providing a space for multiple viewpoints and voices to be heard (Rivers and Chung, 2017). This research report presents a creative research process with a group of elderly Coloured women from Belhar, Cape Town. During the creative process, principles of Playback Theatre were used to enable the women to share their personal stories, transforming these into a public performance with the larger community. The performance became a celebratory moment for the participants as well as the audience members. It was a moment to witness the stories of the older generation in the community and for the women, it was a moment to be witnessed and heard by the younger members and males of the community. By researching and undergoing this creative process, it became evident that storytelling and story sharing not only allows people to be heard and seen, but challenges preconceived assumptions of a homogenous group. This research report presents concepts of Coloured Identity, The Culture of Silence and Storytelling in an attempt to celebrate unheard narratives. According to narrative identity theory, stories often convey a sense of purpose and furthermore internalized family narratives can influence one’s sense of individuality (Clemons, 2018).
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    MUCUS (Music Composition User System): Infectious Flexible Creative Interaction with an Algorithmic Music Composing Application
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Armstrong, Douglas Connolly; Crossley, Jonathan; Harris, Cameron
    Recent research in the field of computational creativity and interaction design suggests new ways in which computers can contribute to a creative process. Computational creativity has necessitated new rigour in theoretical definitions of creativity for computational applications. Interaction design has evolved from a focus on efficiency and productivity to a user-centred focus on the emotional and hedonistic aspects of interaction with a computer. I set out to design an interactive algorithmic music composing tool that implements co- creative strategies for a human–computer collaboration, as described by Kantosalo and Toivonen (2016). This interactive tool would play the role of a creative collaborator in the development of musical material by the use of rule-based algorithmic music composing models, steering the co-creative composing process using high-level musical descriptors and capturing user sentiment to build a model of the user’s musical preferences. It is suggested that, through this process, an engaging creative interaction between human and computer can be sustained. Three versions of the software were tested in three different settings. The results suggest that a variety of co-creative and creativity support approaches are required to cater for a computational agent that does not match a musically trained human’s ability to identify musical merit in a developing idea. In this respect, it was found that there is further scope for exposing details of the computer decision-making process for development alongside the process of musical development, as a black box process of computational reasoning was found to be mysterious and at times frustrating. A rule-based system of music generation was found to be effective in a steering mechanism that matched higher-level descriptors of the musical variation process to music generation parameters. Engagement was sustained for longer when the duration of the musical output was longer in form. This included the ability to integrate the output of the application with existing digital audio workstations.
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    Synthesising Stanislavsky into the African aesthetics of contemporary South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Johnson, Bertina
    The purpose of this study is centred upon an investigation into the possibility of synthesising African aesthetics, as present in modern-day South African theatre, with the methods and philosophy of Stanislavsky in both the training of actors and in theatre performance, reframing the continuum whereby the two methods seem to exist. Presently, the two are often regarded as separate categories, one for realism, the other for more traditional African-based performance and South African presentational theatre. This research entails an examination into the nature of African aesthetics, which includes both the values and ideas surrounding an African worldview, as expressed in literature and in theatre, as well as the significance of post-colonial thought in contemporary South Africa, such as the theories of Afrocentricity and black consciousness, alongside the deciphering of how these approaches and influences are relevant to the creating of South African theatre. The issues surrounding Afrocentricity in training and in theatre are examined in terms of the codes of interculturalism, post-colonial theatre, syncretic theatre and cultural imperialism. This has included theories that apply to the nature of sacred theatre and the polysemic nature of contemporary performances of traditional theatre. Pertinent to and contained within this study is the question of the methods, philosophy and worldview of Stanislavsky, as well as the influence of his position as the creator of what is known as the System. In the process of further defining how and if synthesis is possible, the concepts and methods of his work are examined about the meanings underlying his terms, particularly in the light of more accurate and detailed recent translations, which more directly relate to the spiritual nature of his concepts. The significance that much of Stanislavsky’s work is based on spiritual concepts has been referenced to the spirituality found in African aesthetics and worldview, with a specific regard to the notion of an animated world that contains a force field of energy, which I have named an animated theatre in contrast to the psychological interiority found in much of Western actor training and performance. I have argued that acknowledgment of the articulation of the soul and the spirit in Stanislavsky as vital to the actor’s work was often 8 eradicated or ignored and the subsequent re-evaluation of translations of his written work from Russian to English has opened numerous possibilities in the training of actors and in performance, especially in the consideration of his concepts of experiencing, the creative state, communion, aktivnost and resonance with the audience in relation to the African world view. Included in the research is an ethnographic study of the work I have done as a teacher and director in South Africa, considered along with the creative research, as a way of comparing my Western-based training in both the USA and Europe to the discoveries I have made while practicing theatre in South Africa. Examining the theories of integration and synthesis, of Afrocentricity, the African world view and the underlying philosophy of Stanislavsky’s methods through the creative research, with the exploration of methods of both African performance and Stanislavsky, contributes to the process of evolving effective actor training and dynamic South African theatre. It has led to the discovery of what I have labelled as ‘an animated theatre’, which conveys the intersection between African aesthetics and the work of Stanislavsky, through tracing the innovative possibilities of a conscious synthesis in both the creation of theatre and in the training of actors. Acting terms, such as ‘the creative state’, which are taken for granted, thus take on new meaning when the concept and theory of the spiritual state, as meant by Stanislavsky, and how it influences expression, is not eradicated but acknowledged. Through working in the specifics of locality, for a comprehension of varied cultures, and within the paradigm of African aesthetics and Stanislavsky, an analysis of the relatedness of values held in each system, integration and synthesis becomes possible. The notion of an acting system driven by the energetic concepts of both African aesthetics and Stanislavsky, which correlate to the neuroscience of the linkage of mind, body and emotions, puts forward new theories for exploration in terms of physical expression and the inner and outer continuum of the actor’s expression and indicates opportunities for reevaluating the training of actors. My aim in this study has been to expand the knowledge of this evident synthesis, thereby contributing to the future possibilities in the creation of performance and in the training of the talented young actors so present in Southern African theatre.
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    Composing Augmented Spaces
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2021) Ferreira, Jaco Louwrens; Harris, Cameron; Crossley, Jonathan
    This dissertation explores the notion of place as sensed, conveyed and created through soundscape composition. This is done by looking at works in the genre of soundscape composition and a concert presentation that took place in the Great Hall at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Spatiality in electroacoustic music is explored in relation to theories centred around the notion of place and practically applied to my concert presentation of Sound Spaces. Different forms of spatiality are explored from a compositional perspective with considerations for the listening space, the space created and occupied by the music itself and the methods of diffusion that allows for an augmentation of space. Sound Spaces forms the basis of my investigation of how spatiality in electroacoustic music and soundscape composition can be used to engage with the notion of place as created through the musical experience and illustrates how the notion of place can be incorporated as an active compositional domain in soundscape composition and electroacoustic music.
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    Black Writings: The Modal Mixtape Sampling and Remixing the Ethos of South African Poor Theatre with the Film Medium
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022-03) Sono, Sipho Alex; Jansen van Veuren, Mocke
    Let’s imagine I’m standing in a record store aisle, with all these nostalgic “records” of film and theatre that I’m too young and perhaps too black to be drawn to, but still somehow feel connected to. Not only that, but I can’t shake the feeling that these records have informed me as a South African and could form new work in a strong way. I'm trying to make a “song”, a cohesive language for my practice as a filmmaker, with an underpinning interest, ethos and an understanding of South African Poor Theatre. In my hand I have a Grotowski “record”, called Towards Poor Theatre (1976), that is the main sample for my track. I’m also “digging through crates”, looking at the Theatre of the Oppressed by Augasto Boal (1974) and other theories of theatre in film, to mix together to make the song. I’ve been listening to tracks by Athol Fugard and Barney Simon, as sources of inspiration. As Pharrell Williams describes chords as “coordinates pointing us to emotion” (2019) , I have begun to think that maybe plays such Woza Albert (1971) and Sizwe Banzi is Dead (1972 ) and their recordings for BBC (1982 and 1983) can serve as chords and indicators to the direction for my filmic practice. Although you might not find a section entitled “methodology” in this paper, what you will find is that it is underpinned by practice based research methodologies, in the interest of Walter Mignolo’s epistemology disobedience. In this paper, I employ DJ Lyneé Denise’s concept of The DJ Scholarship (2013) as a research methodology, which sees the paralleling between the roles of the research to those of a DJ, borrowing ideas and recontextualising them . I sample theatre concepts, ideas and theories to mix and remix them and eventually form my own knowledge around my filmic practice. This notion of deejaying also exists in the research question itself, as it seeks to attempt a blending of two artistic disciplines. It is further carried in the way I approach film and storytelling, through the editing process, cutting, scratching, loop and rewinding for further indentation. This research further makes use of auto-ethnographic methods for meaning making and epistemic disobedience. These methods are employed through personal anecdotes and reflexivity as additive interrogators and informers to the research exploration. This research project also makes use of the personal, in the research film as a means to explore therapeutic processes for film as well as an exploration of the personal as a political enquiry. Auto-Ethnography functions in the crux of this research, it is an inquiry of the self, as a black “born free” South African and my relationship with Poor and Protest Theatre as an inherited artistic voice. As I stand in the middle of this record-store of theoretical frameworks and literature, I am also analysing the “records” which pick and sample. I am studying them and thinking about what they represent and what they indicate about me and the ethos of my filmmaking practice in a traumatised, post-apartheid South Africa . So let’s get to mixing.
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    Situating the Camera Club of Johannesburg in South African Histories of Photography 1960–1989
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022-05) Meyersfeld, Michael; Doherty, Christo
    In this research report I present my dissertation together with a self-curated hard-cover book containing one hundred photographs. The two must be viewed as a single entity, with the dissertation providing the supporting evidence for the images selected. In this part of the research report, I discuss the Camera Club of Johannesburg (CCJ), focusing on the work produced by the black and white print section during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Given the progressive outlook of the leadership of the CCJ, work produced during these three decades was rarely seen at other South African clubs. The general apathy of the South African art world towards photography, combined with a sceptical view of camera club photography, resulted in these works being largely ignored. At a time when South African photography was mainly predicated on press and documentary photography, a relatively small group of dedicated photographers were aspiring to produce art with the camera. A selection of these works is shown in an accompanying hard-cover book containing 100 images curated by the author. To situate cameras clubs in the history of photography, I discuss three dominant movements: the Pictorialists, the Photo-Secessionists, and Group f/64. These movements emanated from dissenting voices within camera clubs, with Group f/64 being an example of like-minded photographers opposed to any form of manipulated photography. To highlight the difference between most South African clubs and the CCJ, I discuss the Johannesburg Photographic Society (JPS), the oldest and largest club in Johannesburg, and the Chinese Camera Club of South Africa (CCCSA), formed due to the exclusionary policies of apartheid. Both these clubs remained largely committed to Pictorialism. Both have ceased to exist. By way of contrast, I discuss three overseas clubs, each of which became highly successful by operating outside the prevailing club system to keep their work contemporary. These are the Photo Club Riga, Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante and the Lexington Camera Club. I argue that the CCJ operated at a different level from most other clubs in South Africa, that the work produced was progressive, and where the keywords of the founding statement of the CCJ – “where originality was not stifled by conventional judging” – were prophetic.
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    Analysing the player's involvement in video game character animation
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2021) Ponde, Rugare; Whitcher, Ray
    This dissertation investigates the impact of animation on player interest in an existing video game character. There is high demand and expectation regarding character animation quality, yet understanding and achieving this standard is complex and challenging. The quality of a character’s animation is often derived from its direct appeal to the audience and how its representation informs their impression. However, there is a gap in the literature where there is little on how style representation plays a role in character perception and identification in video games. A practice-led approach was used to understand the relationship between player involvement and the player-character's appeal. The process involved the creation of an animation reel to demonstrate how a popular video game character's acceptance can change based on a player's perception of style in the character's animation. I used Link from the video game Super Smash Brothers Ultimate (Nintendo, 2018). The reel was presented to adults between 18 and 35 to review the animations. Using the process of creative exegesis, the theories and concepts about character appeal, animation design, and player involvement were combined to analyse and critique the contributing factors that inform the perception of the creative work. The results from this study indicate that a change in movement style impacted the perception of Link and the participant's demonstrated interest to play him. This study confirms that style representations are an important design consideration to improve a character’s appeal. This topic may benefit the art and technique of character design and how to improve on it.