Google launches Mali Magic to preserve Mali's 40,000+ manuscripts, art and culture
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Loading... - Adjua Ansah
- 25 Aug 2022
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Google Arts & Culture has been working with local and international organisations (see list below), since 2015, to digitise, curate and share Mali’s incredible rich heritage and stories. The company has now launched Mali Magic, a digital treasure trove that aims to preserve and showcase Mali’s historic and contemporary art and culture.
With the launch of Mali Magic, people from all over the world can view an array of manuscripts, music, art and heritage sites including over 40,000+ digitised endangered manuscripts many of which were smuggled to safety during political unrest in the country.
It also contains more than 50 exhibits which include the first online, interactive tours of some of Mali’s most significant historic sites, at-risk mausoleums and mosques including the Sidi Yahiya and Djinguereber Mosques and the Tomb of Askia; all created using Street View.
Together with its local partners, Google identified four key pillars of Malian culture (manuscripts, music, monuments and modern art), and worked closely with local communities and experts to digitally document the country’s rich art, architecture, scholarship and musical tradition, and to share stories of its resilience in the face of political struggles with the world.
Google Arts & Culture worked with artist and musician DJ Spooky (Paul Miller) to create short videos to explore the evolution of storytelling, from West Africa to the American blues. An original album, Maliba, by Malian singer-songwriter Fatoumata Diawara, produced in Mali and written about the country’s cultural legacy, was created exclusively for the project. Read More...
