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The Victoria and Albert Museum adds WeChat as its collection
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Developed by Zhang Xiaolong and was launched in 2011, WeChat is one of the most popular platforms and it has connected more than 963 million monthly active users worldwide. (Victoria & Albert Museum/File)
T
he Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in London has just added China-based app WeChat into its collection, making the museum the first to collect social media application.
WeChat becomes the part of the museum’s Design, Architecture and Digital (DAD) collections that aim to represent the most influential and relevant design objects of the time. Located in Gallery 76 of the museum, the app is displayed on a mobile phone alongside digital stickers and sketches.
V&A’s decision to feature WeChat came from the museum’s ongoing work and research in Shenzen, China, as part of its curatorial work there leading up to the opening of the V&A Gallery at design hub Design Society in December this year.
Both Luisa Mengoni, head of the V&A Gallery, and Brendan Cormier, lead curator of the V&A Gallery, downloaded the app when they were in Shenzen. They realized that WeChat has influenced the daily life and working habits in China.
“We were surprised to hear from architects running large practices who claimed that their entire office ran on WeChat,” wrote Cormier on V&A’s official website, adding that the app is also able to hail a taxi. “WeChat Pay has also skyrocketed, and each time I visit Shenzen, I see more and more phones being scanned at the cash register instead of cash being exchanged.”
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However, the question that lingered was how the museum will exhibit the app, especially because all social media apps require connection to a server in order to function well. “We couldn’t, for example, simply download their [WeChat] APK [Android Package Kit] file, store it somewhere and then fire it up in one hundred years on an emulator,” wrote Cormier. “If the server didn’t exist in one hundred years, then the app wouldn’t work.”
As the result, the display in the V&A Museum uses a demo version of the APK from 2017 and it was specially made for the museum by the Tencent Technology (Shenzen) Company Limited, the developer of the app. It enables the software running without having to access the server, thus ensuring functionality and engagement for visitors.
“This acquisition represents a snapshot of a globally consumed social media platform. It’s a fantastically important addition to our collection of digital design, reflecting the ever-changing way we communicate and consume information,” said Tim Reeve, the deputy director of the V&A, in a press release.
Developed by Zhang Xiaolong and was launched in 2011, WeChat is one of the most popular platforms and it has connected more than 963 million monthly active users worldwide. (wir/asw)
