Continuing the theme of art in celebration of the FIFA World Cup as it comes to a conclusion in Brazil (see previous items on André Chiotea and Street Art), did you see the Coca Cola “Happiness Flag” unveiled on the football pitch at Arena de Sao Paulo just before the opening game? This imaginative project used modern technology to bring together football fans from all around the world to celebrate the World Cup, whether their country was playing or not, with the aim of having at least one picture from every country in the world.
Coca-Cola invited fans, using social media and the internet, to submit their photograph and be part of the largest digitally produced Photomosaic flag ever created to highlight the power of football to unite people from different backgrounds, cultures and religions. The Happiness Flag, which almost covered the football pitch at Arena de Sao Paulo, was designed by Brazilian street artist Speto in partnership with Argentinian artist Tec. From a distance the flag looks as they designed it, but on close inspection it is is actually a giant pixilated mosaic, the largest ever created, constructed from 200,000 individual photographs of fans from 207 countries submitted through twitter and other social media. Once Speto and Tec finished their canvas painting, Coca-Cola sent a digitized version to Robert Silvers, inventor of Photomosaic technology, who recreated the original design with the photographs posted to www.happinessflag.com. The flag is made up of 192 printed nylon fabric panels, stitched together to create the gigantic 3,015 square metre artwork
More information including a zoom-able image of the flag which shows the faces of all the contributors from around the world can be seen here.
An imaginative project – What will Coca Cola do to follow this at the next World Cup?