A new exhibition has opened at London's Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), capturing the moment YouTube was founded over 20 years ago, UNN reports with reference to CNN.
"The V&A has acquired a reconstructed early webpage and the first video ever uploaded to the platform by co-founder Jawed Karim," a V&A spokesperson said.
The reconstructed early YouTube page features the first video titled "Me at the zoo," in which 25-year-old YouTube co-founder Karim talks about elephants at the San Diego Zoo. The 19-second clip has been viewed 382 million times and received over 18 million likes since its initial upload to the platform on April 23, 2005.
"The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long trunks," Karim says in the video.
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"Our digital preservation team has spent the last 18 months recreating the platform's design and user experience from December 8, 2006 — the oldest documented internet timestamp," added a Victoria and Albert Museum spokesperson. The V&A team collaborated with YouTube's user experience team and a London-based interactive design studio on this project.
YouTube's first work is presented in the "Design 1900 – Present" gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, and the reconstruction process will be shown in a mini-exhibition at the V&A East Storehouse in Stratford.
Neal Mohan, YouTube CEO, stated: "By restoring the early watch page, we're not just showing a video; we're inviting the public to step back in time, to the beginning of a global cultural phenomenon." Corinna Gardner, Senior Curator of Design and Digital at the Victoria and Albert Museum, added: "This snapshot of YouTube in the early days of Web 2.0 marks a significant moment in the history of the internet and digital design."
YouTube continues to be an important platform for art and culture, with original content from museums and galleries often surpassing streaming services in popularity.