Esther Mahlangu's Early Memories Documented with AI: Memory of Painting

As part of the "The Pioneering Spirit of Esther Mahlangu" for Google Arts & Culture, the Google Arts & Culture Lab collaborated with Google DeepMind, Domestic Data Streamers, and curator Dr. Nontobeko Ntombela. Within this initiative, the team leveraged Google DeepMind's Veo video model and a "synthetic memories" approach to convert Mahlangu's oral stories into archival-style moving imagery, recreating visual history for her undocumented childhood (1940–1980).

This constructed image formed the basis of a memory that was recreated using this process for Mahlangu’s archive. This memory was inspired by the following quote by Mahlangu:

“When they went to eat I would get a chicken feather and also go where they were painting. They would shout and say I was messing up their work. We used cow dung and black soil to make painting decorations.”