Change the way the internet sees African creativity
Google “African art” and the search results show curio images of the continent. No Kentridge, no Sibande, no Tlale, no Macharia, no Stuurman.
The African Art Intervention from Absolut, part of the Absolut One Source Live festival of African Creativity, have loaded a vast catalogue of contemporary images of African creativity at www.onesourcelive.com. The more votes an image gets, the more those images will become the ones you see when you google African Art next time.
The aim is to ensure that search engines such as Google present the real and rich image of African art that the continent has to offer.
Absolut One Source Live akes place in Johannesburg on 24 March 2018. Led by five creative revolutionaries, Absolut One Source Live will be an all-day collaborative celebration of contemporary music, art, fashion design and food.
Headlining are Absolut One Source Live creative revolutionaries: award winning rap-star Khuli Chana (South Africa/music) alongside Sho Madjozi, (South Africa/music), Trevor Stuurman, (South Africa/fashion), Fabrice Monteiro, (Senegal-Benin /fashion, art), and Osborne Macharia, (Kenya/photography).
Iris Le Berg, global marketing manager at The Absolut Company says: “The internet is the primary source of information for billions of people around the world. Images people see online about Africa affect their perception and attitude toward the continent and its people. We believe that by changing the predominant images people see, we can affect their attitude too.”
How the African Art Intervention works:
Every time a person enters a search on Google, the search engine crawls the net for information and links based on the keywords used in the search command, i.e., African Art. Google returns the most “relevant” results based on the keywords used, i.e., “African Art”. The relevance of a search result is based on how often particular images have been linked to specific keywords.
This means if enough of us go onto www.onesourcelive.com and “upvote” images with a more accurate reflection of African art today, the Google algorithm will increasingly relate them to the keywords and return them as search results that will change what the world sees when they search for African Art online.
Absolut, part of Pernod Ricard, celebrates African creativity by enabling ground breaking collaborations among Africa’s new breed of creative revolutionaries.
One Source Live is an event that celebrates African Creativity by bringing together a list of African artists, musicians, fashion designers and photographers to collaborate. Led by Absolut ambassador and creative revolutionary Khuli Chana, these artists are coming together to tell a new, uplifting, and positive story about Africa as the creative engine of the world.
