APPENDIX B: 2023 HONOURS RESEARCH GROUP CHOICES

LEAD TITLE & PARTNERS QUARTER DESCRIPTION

Kieran Reid Games as History, Argument, Nostalgia and Memory

2, 3 & 4

This seminar-based course focuses on understanding how (and why) games can be understood as an argument, a historical archive, or as access to nostalgia and memory.

Throughout the course, students will be expected to interrogate how we, as players, can engage with the past through the act of play. This is both in the content of the game (historical games) and in the playing of older games. In doing so, the project aims to interrogate how play can be a form of cultural history and investigation. The course will expect students to play various games (digital and analogue). Through the analysis of the play event, students will develop an understanding of how we might read play in diverse ways. The project will culminate in students presenting a research report (written or recorded or in other accepted forms) that situates their thinking of arguments, history, nostalgia and memory in games.

NO. & REQUIREMENTS

NO. IN GROUP: 10 - 15

NFT, Blockchain & the Metaverse

In collaboration with the MA research cohort which includes:

Angus Davidson

2, 3 & 4

Research projects for those interested in NFT’s, Blockchain and the Metaverse and what these emerging technologies can offer towards an experience of the University, research and culture and creativity in South Africa.

Students will join a team of researchers to unpack the definitions, values, failures and opportunities in these

NO. IN GROUP: 8 -10

An interest in the emerging technologies and their impact on a pan African and international digital economy and digital culture.

In collaboration with Film & TV Dept.

1 & 2 emerging technologies. You will also engage in assisting Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival in a toolkit and focus on NFT’s and Blockchain uses.

Skills required: research, hunger for new knowledge, exploration, experimentation and a bit of building out concepts in notion.so

The research project offers an exploration of different forms of immersive media including cinematic virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality(AR). We explore various approaches to immersive and interactive filmmaking. This is with the intent of expanding students understanding of immersive and interactive filmmaking and its relationship to music and video art. This course is designed to frame the exploration of immersive and interactive filmmaking around a single piece of music (lyrical or orchestral).

In the first semester, both digital arts students and film and TV students will study immersive media (VR & AR). Students will collaborate in groups on a virtual reality film and an augmented reality experience both designed around the same piece of music.

The Afromanga research project consists of a practical and theoretical component - both of which work together to investigate Africa’s potential in the global comics and manga industry. In this course, you will learn the fundamental theoretical principles behind comics and manga as a cultural phenomenon and creative discipline. You will also interrogate the value, impact and potential of African comics and manga on the global industry, and vice versa.

Note that although there is a writer-artist split in production teams, we expect you to have an acceptable skillset in both spheres. Should you like to be a part of

Concurrently, you will be working in teams of two students to produce a unique Afromanga that follows the theme ‘Local is Lekka!’ from start to finish. These teams will be comprised of a writer and an artist, who share duties and responsibilities as part of the production team. This part of the project aims to emulate a deadline-driven and collaborative studio environment, which includes marketing campaigns, outreach initiatives and eventual publication in this year’s compendium.

We'll need competent writers and artists, so we are asking for portfolios during the application process. We need strong writers that can work visually and in short-format; and we’re also looking for unique aesthetics, rather than copy-paste manga, so diversity in style is highly encouraged.

To learn more about Afromanga, you can visit our website here: https://bloodsweatandinkam.wixsite.com/blood-sweat-a nd-ink the project, please submit a portfolio containing:

A page-long script of dialogue between two characters. Remember to employ principles like characterization, tone and pacing.

A maximum of 10 drawings in a manageable format (.png .jpg .pdf .pptx .docx etc.). At least one of these drawings must be a polished piece of art.

The portfolio must contain samples of both your writing and your art. You can send this via email,

Tamara:

1829735@students.wits.ac.za

Jess:

1683476@students.wits.ac.za

The course offers students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds the opportunity to investigate digital formations and life worlds using critical perspectives that have been developed within the ambit of the Critical Digital Humanities. This seminar-based module is

3, 4 organised around the question of ‘The Digital Self’. To this end, it explores the ways in which digital selves and bodies are produced within, and through, digital networks and platforms. Investigating the forms of digital selfhood that are made and distributed across different social media platforms, we will identify and analyse the situated ethical, political, and material, effects these body-network assemblages produce. The course takes its impetus from intersecting queer, feminist, and anti-racist, approaches to the question of life-technology intervolvements to reflect on how digital formations might both constitute and/ or frustrate the anti-capitalist, feminist, and decolonising, projects that are necessary to (re)shape the terms of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’; a conjuncture that is conditioned by platform capitalism. The course provides students with opportunities to hone their research, project development, and reporting, skills.

OPEN (Apply to IACS) topic considers some of the developments in digital media culture that have facilitated shifts in cinematic practices of production, distribution and consumption.• Cinema in South AfricaThis topic includes selected readings on production, consumption, representations and other related aspects of cinema in the broader African context as well as on South Africa specifically. It will focus on cinema or film culture in South Africa, including challenges facing South African filmmakers, questions of national identity or regional filmmaking,