INTERMEDIARIES @ AFRICA GAMES WEEK

Hack Ur Culture Virtual Exhibition

Hack Ur Culture Virtual Exhibition

The Hack Ur Culture Virtual Exhibition features winning project teams from the Hack Ur Culture Hackathon, which is a virtual platform that brings together GLAM institutions (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) with creative minds and tech enthusiasts to bring about collaborations and innovations deriving from open cultural data. Hack Ur Culture Hackathon in the African region was organised and managed by Goethe-Institut and Credipple in South Africa.

The exhibition features 9 project teams across the prize categories listed below. 9 total winning teams across 3 categories. The Best Overall Project team wins a trip to Germany to participate in the Coding Da Vinci Hackathon 2021.

1st Prize for Best Overall Project

District 6 Location-based Social App by Artyfact

Learn about history through this digital location-based platform

District 6 Social App is a digital location-based platform which allows users (District 6’ers) to interact with their environment through an auditory and visual gamified experience. They do so by interacting with their immediate environment (maps & shops) together with the audio files relevant to the marked locations making them learn about the history. This is backed through a gamified process through a leaderboard and progress tracking. District 6'ers can explore and interact with archives: this is a refreshing and exciting way to learn about the history with friends.

Team Members

ArtyFact

2nd Prize for Best Overall Project

Dial Africa by Craft Dojo

A platform that can text users' requests on info from the digital archives of cultural organisations

Using text queries and list option selections, we’re going to create a platform that can search all the digital archives of cultural organisations to feed information back to the user in the form of text messages related to their search query.

Team Members

Craft Dojo

3rd Prize for Best Overall Project

The Book Dash Adventure Demo by Culture Code

A game that encourages a love for reading by bringing characters to life

We built a game demo that reminds children and caregivers that books can be brought to life. Books are more than words and pictures on paper; they are a representation of other worlds.  We created the game to represent this adventurous, imaginative world and make children excited about the Book Dash world.

The game makes the Book Dash world richer and interactive. It brings the characters from different books together as if they were always neighbours and friends in your library kingdom and lets you adventure with them.

Playing with the Book Dash characters in a mobile game and getting a book as a final reward, helps frame books as fun, adventurous and desirable, promoting book-ownership from a very young age.

The main impact of this is game an awareness tool - capturing someone who might not be as excited about books as they are about games (or reading to their children). Catching someone looking for a children’s game on the Play store, and through this game leading them to the Book Dash online library. Along the way, we are teaching them about the benefits of reading to their child, empowering caregivers to feel comfortable engaging with children while reading and encouraging the child to fall in love with the Book Dash world.

Instead of developing our own characters, we have adapted existing Book Dash characters and their backstories to bringing eight well-loved Book Dash characters together for an adventure. We have kept the original art style of each character to make them identifiable and built each mini-game around their book’s backstory. A big shout-out to all the Book Dash creators and Book Dash who publish their work under a creative commons license. Read more about each character in our game at bookdash.org. Sound from www.freesfx.co.uk.

Team Members

1st Prize for Most Compelling Project

District 6 Storytelling Website by Afrikreatives

A platform for interactive storytelling and creating access to archives

We are solving the problem of access to archives as well as creating a platform for interactive story-telling.

Our intended impact would be for the District Six archives and collections to be easily accessible and digestible into interactive stories as well as developing a open source platform for user-generated GLAM content.

Team Members

2nd Prize for Most Compelling Project

Memory Hunters by Hack Circle

Memory Hunters

Project Link

Get to know the District Six map in 3D

A 3D game where you can explore an interactive version of the District Six Map. The player can explore multiple areas.

Team Members

Hack Circle

3rd Prize for Most Compelling Project

Collection Management & Remote Collaboration Prototype for Iziko Museums by Myths

Iziko App

Project Link

A web app addressing collection management and access

We created a prototype for the Iziko Museum to help tackle the issues we noted from the GLAM presentation. Our web app (prototype) should allow the museum:

  1. Add and manage collections.
  2. Remotely collaborate with the public and researchers to help shed more light on the collections in their care.
  3. Generate extra funding to manage the app through a subscription based model.
  4. Track changes made on collections.
  5. Generate collection QR codes with embedded and encrypted data.
  6. Create forms with pre-filled data (to help make data entry fast).

Intended purpose and value:

  1. Help the museum to manage their collections.
  2. Gives public and researchers remote access to Iziko Museum collections. This is particularly useful in the education sector. Teachers/Educators in other countries do not have to travel all the way to South Africa to view collections with their students. It can be accessed remotely in classrooms world wide.
  3. Help the museum learn more about the collections in their care by collaborating remotely with researchers world wide.

Team Members

Myths

1st Prize for Best Team Spirit

Pic-Cha-Africa by Team Oros

A 2D puzzle guessing game that encourages learning

Pic-cha Africa is a 2D puzzle game developed by team Oros for HUC. A player has to guess the the word by describing the order in which the pictures are layout. The difficulty of the game requires the players to use the clue which takes them to a landing page which contains reading material to the answer (eg: GLAM websites). The game features African content and sound for people to interact and consume.

Team Members

Space Salad Studios Pic Cha Africa

2nd Prize for Best Team Spirit

Afrika Glamap 2.0 by Venus

Connecting archives, collections, artists and researchers from across the continent

Nowadays, most communication happen online rather than in the real life. To be discovered from all over the world and to have more feedback from his own people, our continent, AFRICA, has to be more present on the internet, AFRICAN GLAM Institutions included.

That is the reason for our project. We want to gather Archives and Collections in one place online. We want to create interactions, between all African communities, GLAM institutions, researchers and professionals first. Together, we could take care and benefit from our continent's diverse culture. Communities and researchers could complete the information about those archives and collections on this platform, and give feedback about the way to show them to the world. They could find useful information about each of the AFRICA GLAM institutions. Sales and online exhibitions will be organized inside the AFRICA Glamap 2.0 website, which will increase audiences. In some extent, we aim to unite Africa with the help of our artists and GLAM Institutions. Like this, we could also show the beautiful face of our AFRICA to the whole world.

Team Members

Afrika Glamap 2.0

3rd Prize for Best Team Spirit

Bushbaby Platform by Elite Minds

Bushbaby Platform

Project Link

A one-stop platform for avid travelers

Bushbaby PLATFORM is going beyond the use of traditional 2 dimensional imagery. It is applying the latest technology in 360 degrees scenery capture to give the user the feel of the place. It will be available on mobile devices, Android and Apple iOS, as well as available for viewing on a desktop. The user will be able to create their own personal account; search for a heritage sites in their preferred area/destination; take virtual tours of the available listings; compare and contrast their options; explore other activities and landmarks in the area; get an itinerary list; finally make a booking if they feel like visiting the place physically.

Bushbaby is to be a one-stop platform for an avid traveler easing processes of booking, creating an itinerary, navigating offline, weather patterns. Bushbaby is to address the phases of a travel cycle - DREAM, PLAN & BOOK, ON THE TRIP, SHARE.

  • DREAM - provides a vast list of dream destinations to tour virtually
  • PLAN & BOOK - fast and easy direct reservations feature, itinerary list
  • ON THE TRIP - suggests sites to see and activities to do.
  • SHARE - make reviews on places visited, make recommendations on your personal profile and share the wonderful memories and highlights of the trip by uploading photos on the social forum.

The best feature of Bushbaby is the virtual experience option. This gives a traveler an in-depth sense of their dream destination and makes the intended trip even more enticing. The master itinerary feature is also a ground breaker because the traveler just selects two points from the beginning of the trip to the destination with layovers and its algorithm suggests heritage/museum options and creates an itinerary for the trip between the two points. Bushbaby also has an offline feature to ensure you can use the application even in areas without mobile network coverage or internet.

Team Members