A circular sculpture installed at LOVE Park – resembling a portal – soon will connect Philadelphia to several cities around the world that have identical sculptures hooked up to 24/7 livestreams shared between them.
Crews were spotted installing the sculpture Friday at LOVE Park, inviting speculation about the purpose of its video board and the camera mounted on top. The installation is part of a global experiment known as the Portals Network, which was developed in 2016 by Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gylys.
MORE: Spreading vandalism or joy? Shamcow graffiti evokes a range of emotions in Roxborough
Portal sculptures are meant to bridge cultures by offering a look into the day-to-day happenings in the places where they’re installed. The first two Portals debuted in 2021 in Vilnius, Lithuania and Lublin, Poland. The two European cities — about 375 miles apart — were united by a sci-fi-style attraction that the Verge likened to something out of the “Stargate” universe.
The intent of the project is to bring people together in the face of global challenges that threaten planetary unity.
“I felt a deep need to counter polarising ideas and to communicate that the only way for us to continue our journey on this beautiful spaceship called Earth is together,” Gylys says on the project’s website. “I did not want to enter the ring and fight but to offer something with love and light.”
Philadelphia Parks & Recreation declined to share details or comment about the installation in LOVE Park, which is surrounded by metal barriers.
Philly has one of the Portal cameras, which will share pictures with another portal camera and another country beginning on Tuesday . It’s in Love Park ❤️💙 pic.twitter.com/RJmUxk1hNB
— PhillyChitChat (@HughE_Dillon) October 19, 2024
In addition to the Portals in Vilnius and Lublin, there also are sculptures in Dublin, Ireland and Piaui, Brazil.
The Portal that was installed in Philadelphia was formerly at New York City’s Flatiron South Public Plaza, CBS3 reported. That Portal debuted in May and was connected to the one in Dublin. It was temporarily shut down within two weeks because of “inappropriate behavior,” including an OnlyFans model who flashed the camera and another person who shared images of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
To reduce negative interactions with the sculpture in New York, its sponsors restricted the Portal’s hours of operation and created safeguards to automatically blur images when people got too close to the camera.
“The overwhelming majority of people who have visited the Portal sculptures have experienced the sense of joy and connectedness that these works of public art invite people to have,” the Dublin city council, the Flatiron NoMad Partnership in New York, and Portals.org said in a joint statement after they reopened the Portals in the spring.
Since seeing the Portal go up at LOVE Park, some have wondered on social media whether Philadelphia can be trusted with this kind of experiment.
Philadelphia’s last brush with an experimental project in this vein didn’t end well. In the summer of 2015, a solar-powered, hitchhiking robot from Canada, called hitchBOT, was found decapitated and destroyed in Old City less than two weeks after it began a journey that was supposed to take it from Massachusetts to California. The city’s role in the demise of the robot earned a mention from John Oliver during a “Last Week Tonight” segment on automation.
Over the weekend, some observers noticed that the Portal appeared to have a crack at the bottom of its screen. A city official told CBS3 that the damage was caused by screws that were turned too tightly during the installation, not as a result of vandalism. Crews are now determining whether the screen can be fixed or if a new one needs to be installed.
Once Philadelphia’s livestream is up and running, the Portal at LOVE Park is expected to be linked to multiple cities that have the sculptures.
