Wananchi Opinion: It’s time we digitized our art more to ensure creative posterity

Digital explosion is the latest fad in Kenya and in the world – and which is clearly here to stay.

As an arts writer and enthusiast – I have been exploring the digital space trying to understand just how much of creative digitization our creative institutions have realised since 2020 – when Covid-19 happened.

It is not enough that Kenyans are among the leading users of smartphones in the world – even with numbers of users hitting a crescendo.

Today, mobile phones, especially smartphones, are everywhere in Kenya, from cities to rural areas.

And these phones are not just for making calls— but they’re used for everything including shooting video content and posting pictures.  

As refreshing as this may sound – this alone does not bring the real essence of digitization.

I have had a chance to visit the Louvre Museum in France – which caught my imagination as an artist and arts critique. I love books too – which still is art.

At the Louvre Museum I got a chance to follow the publication of Dan Brown's bestselling book, The Da Vinci Code and the subsequent movie adaptation of the book.

Just to let you know, the Louvre is among the top museums in the world, drawing millions of visitors each year trip to France.

The Louvre is home to some of the world's most famous artworks, including the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo among others. Art lovers like myself know this all too well.

The Louvre is the world's largest museum, with nearly 73,000 square meters of exhibition space.

So, during my artistic sojourn, I came to learn that one does not need to visit Paris in order to experience what the Louvre has to offer?

All this has been made possible because of digital innovation. This would not have been possible without us having embraced digital innovation and convergence.

So, when I visited the Alliance Française library, in Nairobi the other day, I had a chance to experience the realisation of digitization of art, and for free. Through technology, of course!

Here you get to put on a Virtual Reality headsets and through this immersive technology, you get a 3D experience as if you are inside the Louvre as well as 11 other high profile institutions in France like Musée d'Orsay, and Centre Pompidou, among others.

So, I spoke to Denis Mucheru, a senior librarian at Alliance Française to understand this new invention.

I learned that the facility is the first of its kind in Kenya. That in Africa, there are only a handful.

Micro-Folie, he adds, is a cultural and digital innovation project developed by the French Ministry of Culture, in partnership with La Villette, aimed at bringing art, culture, and science closer to people.

I gather that there are plans to showcase more than 4,500 digitised masterpieces documents artefacts from these institutions in France.

Also host book events, such launches, discussions as well as poetry events. This is refreshing to hear.

The other key digital attraction at the library is the Le Hub incubator space which has four super computers set aside for digital content creators such as game developers, colourists, sound designers, animators and illustrators for visual development.

To understand how fast and efficient these computers are, John Njeru, an animator explains that ordinary rendering that ordinarily takes up to one and a half hours on a personal computer takes only 4 minutes on these machines.

To emphasise this point, David Amolo, a film editor says that for synchronising only a personal computer takes 27 minutes.

"On these machines however, a combination of synchronizing, editing and rendering a 4k multicam sequence with an output of 40GB takes less than 18 minutes, that's impressive."

Best of all, this facility is free of charge for these digital content creators.

This incubation space has been made possible using funds provided by Creation Africa, through the French Embassy.

Mucheru is quick to allay fears that the library only opens its doors to French speaking people.