The Google Cultural Institute is increasingly helping the Indian culture flourish on a global platform, bringing the best of Indian art and culture online. Google announced that it has added ten new partner institutions to ‘digitise’ and share their content via its platform. These include:
- The Salar Jung Museum
- Victoria Memorial Hall Kolkata
- Dastkari Haat Samiti
- Devi Art Foundation
- Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
- Academy of Fine Arts and Literature
- Kalakriti Archives
- Heritage Transport Museum
- Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres & Ashrams
- Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute.
The U.S. based tech giant is surely doing much to promote Indian culture, and its museums, which are nothing more than tourist attractions having barely any footfalls these days. The Google Cultural Institute, which was launched in 2012 in India with the National Museum and the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi as initial partners has now announced to having added 2,000 new images and 70 virtual exhibits to Google’s platform.
The collection also includes 26 new virtual tours of famous sites such as the Ekattarso Mahadeva Temple and the royal saloon that was once part of the Palace on Wheels. These have been captured using Google’s Street View technology.
Google has never ceased from making some amazing use of technology in various forms and art, and it continues to do so. “Technology will play a crucial role in transforming and building a truly Digital India, as per the vision of Hon’ble Prime Minister, and getting Indian culture and heritage online will play an important role in making the vision a reality. We appreciate the contribution of the Google Cultural Institute in this regard, and we look forward to a long and fruitful partnership,” Mahesh Sharma, minister of state of tourism and culture and civil aviation said.
The Dastkaari Haat Samiti, Devi Art Foundation, Heritage Transport Museum and Kalakriti Archives are also launching mobile apps built by the Cultural Institute in a bid to make the content even more accessible. Also, the Dastkaari Haat Samiti, Kalakriti Archives, Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute and Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres and Ashrams will use the Cultural Institute’s embedding technologies to deliver virtual exhibits on their own websites.
“The mission of the Cultural Institute is to make the world’s heritage accessible for global audiences and to preserve it digitally for generations to come. By bringing India’s rich heritage online, we hope to introduce people across the globe to the fascinating world of Indian culture, history, and art. We have expanded the scope of our technology so that anybody with a mobile phone can now explore Indian culture through unique partner apps. Partners can also embed content on their website, helping making Indian culture easily accessible to all,” Amit Sood, director of the Google Cultural Institute said.
Digitisation has become the new form of survival and is preserving a lot more than just culture. It preserves memories of the late, in its true form. Just like Google has an exhibition on yoga guru BK Iyengar in collaboration with Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute on its site. It is preserving and merging art with virtual reality.
The medium has come a long way since its formation. Sood says digitising India’s cultural heritage is a long way to go. “We have countries where we’ve done 80 museums, 90 museums, so for me in India this is just the start. We are nowhere close to capturing Indian heritage and culture.”
We believe that this initiative will help make some revered institutes organize and put forth their content in a much better way now on. Also, it will become more accessible through mobile apps, and exhibits which people seldom take out time for will gain their attention when it comes to their phone screens. Its great to see how technology will now revive Indian culture where world will be its stage!
