Philly’s Portal is like social media come to life

For once, the biggest tourist attraction in Philadelphia’s Love Park isn’t the artwork that gives the plaza its name. While a handful of tourists flocked to take photos with the statue of love, the biggest attraction this week was the Portal, which was surrounded by a crowd of about 50 people when it was unveiled on Tuesday.

The Portal, which is almost 12 feet tall and weighs 3.5 tons, is a live video housed in a futuristic, industrial-style circle, connecting two cities from around the world. A project of Lithuanian entrepreneur Benediktas Gylys, Portal made international headlines this summer when someone in New York City’s Portal lit up the city of Dublin, Ireland. The Portal was temporarily closed and relocated in September.

When the Portals project announced that its new installation would be coming to Philadelphia, locals were concerned. This is a city that has to paint light poles when its sports teams are in the qualifying stage so that people don’t climb it; the city that created Gritty, the riotous orange trash monster as the official mascot of the NHL team Philadelphia Flyers, and the Phillie Phanatic, the most litigated mascot in sports; a city where someone will send a Craigslist connection that has not been caught to make sure you know that they gave you the finger to drive a Cybertruck. If downtown Manhattan was so sad about Portal, what will the people of Philadelphia — who once threw snowballs at Santa Claus — up their sleeves?

Before the Portal could be activated, the screen cracked, but it wasn’t vandalism. It was an installation error — a false start. And yet, when it finally opened, the area around the Portal on its first day was eerily vibrant. Maybe it’s too good. I was at Portal when a nearby high school let out a day, and even those young people didn’t cause a ruckus (although some of them insisted on using Love Park to do their bike tricks – dangerous – but maybe we can. submit this to Tony Hawk as there is a lesson for Love Park in the “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater” games). Standing next to the installation for about 30 minutes, only one person crossed the line when he gave a guy in Dublin the finger.

The Portal itself is like the internet alive. You can instantly connect with people all over the world, and with strangers in your own town, but that also means it shows some of the worst parts of our lives online. A few bad apples can spoil everyone’s experience, but unlike the Internet, people are more successful at measuring themselves in person. The young man who stuck his middle finger into the Portal was chased away by the crowd and left. When people break social norms online, it’s very easy to hide behind the scenes, wreaking havoc in the shadows.

Gylys, the entrepreneur who created Portals, started this project after realizing that his success in the Lithuanian startup sector still left him feeling unfulfilled in his life.

“After developing several online businesses I had signs of success to show for it and painful deprivation to hide,” Gylys wrote. “Finally surrendering and honestly admitting that I knew nothing about the truth led me to a mystical experience where I felt one with all life on Earth for two weeks.”

Despite the dubious “mysterious experience”, Gylys’ mission is straightforward: He wants to help people connect, help us see that we are not as different as we seem.

Gylys’ background working on consumer applications in Lithuania comes in handy because it is a technical feat in itself that the Portal can operate. The basic software was designed by Video Window, which uses the same video feed that is always on with its main product, which is very attractive: It connects remote workers so that they feel like they are in the office (or, perhaps, they just walk into the office). you feel secure).

The video window is not responsible for ensuring that the video stream works without technical problems, but the company must ensure that the portals are not hacked. On the site on the Portal, everything was going well – the video feed was changed every few minutes, showing scenes from Ireland, Poland, and Lithuania without technical difficulties.

Around 3pm in Philadelphia, these European Portals show us people walking home from a long day at work or a weekday outing. In Dublin, some passers-by stopped – beer bottles in hand – and danced for the camera. One older man pretended to be teasing, but thankfully kept things PG and only took off his jacket. Meanwhile, in Lithuania, where it was snowing at 10 p.m., no one wanted to stop and say hello. When Portal moved from Ireland to Lithuania, everyone sighed, as we lost our source of entertainment for a while. (I’m sure people in Vilnius are friendlier when they’re not walking home in the cold.)

You can see through the portal, but you can’t hear, so we communicate with gestures. The youth must have already worn out abroad – these portals have been around for a few years, although the addition of a new city to the mix might have made it more interesting. A Polish man showed us some shy dances, and our crowd of enthusiastic Philadelphians, who were seeing the Portal for the first time, would imitate it again. For that guy, it must be like looking in the mirror, except the mirror is 50 people who are weirdly happy that you stopped to wave.

There is a fundamental discrepancy between Gylys’s intention and what he actually achieves. Gylys wants this to bring us together, but Portal doesn’t really make new friends. As I waved to strangers in Ireland, Lithuania, and Poland, I was reminded of how different we are, just as Gylys intended. But I also thought about how little we know about these people – what if a Polish dancer has terrible political views? What if the guy who made me laugh with his PG striptease is actually running an underground illegal gambling ring?

Philadelphia has no apparent conflict with these three countries, but what would happen if the US and Ireland suddenly ended up in a heated international conflict? Can we all be happy to say hello across the Atlantic Ocean, or will the Portal end up conveying the rhetoric of international strife and discord? Some folks at Portal joke that all hell will break loose if we watch Dallas, Texas, home of the Cowboys, our biggest football rivals. (The next day, someone showed up with a sign that said “Dallas Sucks.”)

A day later, the Portal still seems to be working fine. Philly Elmo – a guy in an Elmo costume who shows up at random city events with a drum line – arrived in the evening, introducing the bewildered Lithuanians to his antics. One man in Dublin was wearing a Philadelphia Eagles shirt, much to the delight of the crowd on the other side of the Portal.

Just as the Portal shows another city, it also shows us. Although few people intend to use this technology to be green, many visitors are happy to enjoy a moment of communication with a complete stranger on the other side of the lake. Maybe people aren’t so bad after all – unless they’re Cowboys fans.