UK Victoria and Albert Museum recreates YouTube’s first video

A new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London captures the moment YouTube was born over 20 years ago, highlighting the platform’s early digital design and cultural impact, CNN reports.

“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 reconstruction features YouTube’s first upload, “Me at the zoo,” in which then-25-year-old Karim stands at the San Diego Zoo, talking about elephants. The 19-second clip, uploaded on April 23, 2005, has amassed 382 million views and over 18 million likes. “The cool thing about these guys is that they have really really really long trunks,” Karim says in the video.

“Our digital conservation team have spent the last 18 months rebuilding the design and experience of the platform from 8 December 2006, the oldest timestamp documented online,” the V&A spokesperson added. The project involved collaboration with YouTube’s user experience team and the London-based interaction design studio oio.

The inaugural YouTube work is now on display in the Design 1900–Now gallery at V&A South Kensington, while a mini display at V&A East Storehouse in Stratford explores the process of creating the reconstruction.

Neal Mohan, YouTube’s chief executive, said: “By reconstructing an early watch page, we aren’t just showing a video; we are 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 V&A, added: “This snapshot of YouTube during the early days of Web 2.0 marks an important moment in the history of the internet and digital design.”

YouTube continues to play a significant role in arts and culture, with original content from museums and galleries often outperforming traditional streaming services.

By Vafa Guliyeva