OpenUCT is the open access institutional repository of the University of Cape Town (UCT). It preserves and makes UCT scholarly outputs digitally and freely available, including theses and dissertations, journal articles, book chapters, technical and research reports, as well as open educational resources.

 

Recent Submissions

Item
Open Access
Writer performance ranges on the NBT Academic Literacy Test: an analysis through a Semantics lens
(2019) Msusa, Naomi; Cliff, Alan
Karl Maton argues that Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) not only allows knowledge practices to be seen and analysed; it also brings them into relation with the analysis of students themselves. In other words, it views educational experiences as an outcome of the dispositions brought by actors to a knowledge context, and the nature of the context itself. My dissertation research addressed the question of how LCT can be used to analyse student performance of a higher education applicant cohort on a National Benchmark Test (NBT) Academic Literacy assessment. This was done in order to glean more information that can be used firstly as a predictive tool for future success, and as an identifier of specific areas that reveal student academic under-preparedness. The study also attempted to show how this information might play a role in the development of interventions intended for students identified in this way. I argued that an appropriately designed tool can enable the lecturer to surface additional information from the NBTs that may be of further use after admission and placement, particularly when applied to an aspect of the curriculum of an extended or support programme. I proceeded by analysing the performance patterns of an NBT Academic Literacy test-taker cohort. I focused on the semantic gravity and semantic density ranges of these test-takers' performance, and used this analysis as a tool to gauge the level of performance of the NBT test-taker against what is considered to be the 'legitimate' indicator for success: status and achievement in this domain in a first year classroom. I demonstrated how, by using this tool, the lecturer might be able to determine what information from the NBT AL may be deemed to be of value to complement existing provision of support in this domain
Item
Open Access
Unravelling: Photographic Explorations Of Mending The Forest
(2023) Pretorius, Emme; Brundrit, Jean; Josephy, Svea
Unravelling: Photographic Explorations of Mending the Forest explores aspects of South Africa's Garden Route Afrotemperate forests and my relationship to them through my artistic practice. This project looks at the unravelling of these forests and at my unravelling within these forests and my artistic process. It is concerned with the coming undone of these forests' intricate systems in the interest of the Capitalocene, and with my figurative artistic attempts to fix these forests. This project further aims to make this unravelling visible, to indicate the faded and fragmented state of these forests. It also addresses the futility of some of the attempts to rectify the damage done to these forests. This document explores the importance of process and materiality in photography and in my artistic practice. Through the experimental use of darkroom processes, expired paper and the sewing of fragmented photographs, I aim to demonstrate how such processes and attention to materiality can make my practical and theoretical concerns visible.
Item
Open Access
Improvisation and Healing: Wayfinding as a praxis of knowledge
(2023) Hassim, Kamil; Campbell, Kurt; Mahashe George
Two Zen monks upon hearing a wind bell ringing: “ The Master asks: ‘What makes the sound? Does the bell make the sound or the wind make the sound?' The student answers: ‘My mind makes the sound, because the wind causes the bell to strike and vibrate the air, but there is no sound until that vibration reaches my ear and is interpreted by the mind. Sound exists thus only inside of our mind.' The Master says this is not true: ‘Even if my mind is working, if the wind does not blow, the bell does not shake, and the air does not vibrate – then there is no sound. In reality, they are all making the sound. There is no subject who listens and no sound that is heard, but the entire universe is making the sound through this person. This is total dynamic function.1' – Zen koan from Master Dogēn's Shobogenzo (Cross & Nishijima, 2006) The attached document is the digital library submission for the text which accompanies my MFA body of work. The works I create explore modes of investigation and knowledge in a histor- ical, contemporary and futurist setting. Taking the form of sonic sculptures, instruments, visuals, videos and performance pieces, I consider the artworks as philosophical larynxes2. I used the project to explore how art can be a tool to seek and represent information about certain experiences in my social world and how an individual path of healing through artistic practice is possible and can be realised in the exhibition
Item
Open Access
How To Fold A Grid
(2023) Lehr-Sacks, Maia; Langerman, Fritha; van der Schijff, Johann
How to Fold a Grid explores the body, object, and thing in relation to the grid. It explores the use of the grid as an orientation and disorientation device. It discusses the elements of the grid: point; line; square; cube by referring to queer theory, Object Oriented Ontology, the physics of time and cartesian geometry The artist (the body) navigates these themes through paper folding, sculpting, making marks, as well as collecting and arranging found objects. There is a particular focus on a repetitive and modular process of making. The works interrogate a distortion and manipulation of the grid. This engagement acts as a mechanism of allowing the artist to orient themselves through practice while also querying the binaries imposed by the object subject divide in relation to the structural hierarchies imposed on queer bodies by the social matrix that defines the “norm”.
Item
Open Access
Leisure Island: An Investigation of Suburban Landscapes and Domestic Spaces in South Africa
(2017) Lilford, Kirsten Lee; MacKenny, Virginia; Lamprecht, Andrew
Media and communications analyst, Roger Silverstone (1997) brings our attention to the negative elements of the suburban landscape, a space more often associated with the comfortable life – one filled with luscious garden lawns, large crystal blue swimming pools, double garages and domestic workers' quarters. That this domestic space has ‘protected' itself from the stress of the city through the use of high walls, electric fences and wrought iron gates, is an irony worth commenting on. As Silverstone notes, this constructed paradise is not without its complications.