Author Archives: Rami Jawhar

Explore the Cradle of Creativity on Google Arts & Culture

Creativity in Africa is not something new — it dates back thousands of years and continues into the present day. In fact, some of the earliest paintings by humans were found engraved in a cave in South Africa 20,000 years ago. The Cradle of Creativity, a new project on Google Arts & Culture, explores how creativity evolved in Africa from rock art to contemporary brush strokes. In collaboration with the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art (YSMA) in Nigeria and the Origins Centre in South Africa, you can now explore 50 expertly-curated stories, featuring over 60 high-resolution Gigapixel images of artworks digitized using the Google Art Camera, 17 Street View virtual tours and, for teachers and students, a dedicatedlesson plan.

Here are 4 fun ways to get you started on a journey of creativity in Africa:

Early human inventions

Image of ochre in various forms: as a rock, as powder and as liquid. Image is in hues of red, yellow and brown.

Ochre, paint and the past

There is evidence that humans became culturally modern, or cognitively complex, around 100,000 years ago and the beginnings of creativity this brought about originated in Africa. It is also possible that the world’s first artists and their workshops can be found in Africa, with evidence of art and ochre production found in the Blombos Cave in South Africa, Porc Epic in Ethiopia, Sibudu in South Africa and Twin Rivers in Zambia.

Image depicts a stylised sculpture of a female head. This figure has triangular eyes with holes in its eyes and mouth and hair parted into mounds. The sculpture is created in a light brown material with flecks of white .

NOK Head

How sculptures evolved

Did you know that in Yoruba Philosophy, the head is seen as the shell that houses the essence of an individual? Or that the occupational and political status of the deceased determined the material that was used in making bronze heads? You can now explore these and more interesting facts about Nok, Benin, and Ife art. You can also walk around the YSMA and explore the evolution of sculptures using Google Street View.

An ivory etching in hues of cream, gold and dark red. Cream figures including horned animals, skeletons and female forms take up most of the frame and are surrounded by dark red and black pigment.

Bruce Onobrakpeya, Panel of 5: Oshare Me jevwe, Omote kporovwe, Adje Ewenvwe kpo, Igurube, Eyame Jevwe.

Storytelling through art

People across the continent have explored different methods to pass on their stories and express themselves through art and creativity for thousands of years. Whether it is to tell stories of the spirit world through the communal trance dance of the San People, or to raise awareness about urgent issues and arguing for change today, Africans continue to find creative ways to tell their story.

This image shows a work comprised of sections of different fabrics which have been joined together to form a patchwork wall hanging. Indigo is the predominant color of this work, but white black and light blue are also present Each piece of cloth has geometric shapes woven into it.

Nike Davies-Okundaye, Cycle of Life

Learning from the brushstrokes

Paintings can hold so much meaning and symbolism behind colors, figures, style and brushstrokes. Thanks to the experts at the YSMA and the giga-pixel resolution images captured by Art Camera, you can now learn more about the masterpieces of renowned artists like Ben Enwonwu, Bruce Onobrakpeya and Nike Davies-Okundaye. Zoom into the details to spot the onlookers in Uche Okeke’s ‘The Conflict’, and explore how Ben Osaghae depicts spiritual contradictions in his painting 'Miracle for Sale'.

Are you a student or a teacher? We have also created a dedicatedlesson plan for you. Visit g.co/google4africa21 if you want to continue your exploration, or download Google Arts & Culture’s Android or iOS app to further immerse yourself in the cradle of creativity!

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Making a video game in two days with Tilt Brush and Unity

Imagine you’re playing a video game, and you’re being attacked by a gang of angry space aliens. Wouldn't it be great if you could just paint an object in 3D space and use it to defend yourself? A talented team of artists and game fanatics explored this very premise at Global Game Jam 2018, a game development hackathon. Seeing Tilt Brush as a fast, powerful and fun 3D asset creation tool, the team at Another Circus used the Tilt Brush Toolkit to create a virtual reality game in less than 48 hours.

“Pac Tac Atac” casts you as a space adventurer who has landed on an alien planet and needs to beam a rescue message into intergalactic space. But watch out, the locals are angry and in the mood to smash your transmitter. It’s up to you to keep them away!

What the aliens don’t know is that you’re armed with two cans of spray paint, that let you  magically draw any object in your imagination to defend yourself.

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Once you’ve got your magic object, you can start fighting off the aliens with slices and dices, or by throwing your weapon and calling it back like a boomerang.

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“Pac Tac Attack” was built using the Unity game engine, using art exclusively painted in Tilt Brush and exported as 3D models. Using Tilt Brush provided a number of benefits over traditional 3D modeling. For example, to make creating lots of aliens easy for the development team, they first drew different body parts (heads, torso, arms and legs) in Tilt Brush. In Unity, they randomly assembled alien bodies using the body parts they originally painted in Tilt Brush. By procedurally generating bodies in this way, they could easily scale assembling dozens of alien bodies with unique movement styles.

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One of the biggest challenges the team faced was optimizing the Tilt Brush art for in-game performance. Given the amount of detail generated by each brush stroke, they improvised by creating assets with fewer strokes (like Jonathan Yeo and his 3D-printed bronze self-portrait), and using Mesh Simplify, a Unity extension, that allows developers to reduce the poly count of their 3D models.  

“Pac Tac Atac” is available for the HTC Vive now. Check out more here.