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Portals art installation coming to Philadelphia

The project features livestreaming video between two international locations, and apparently arrived Friday at LOVE Park. Which other locale it'll link with has not been disclosed.

People in both New York and Dublin, Ireland, wave and signal at each other while looking at a livestream view of one another as part of an art installation on the street in New York in May.
People in both New York and Dublin, Ireland, wave and signal at each other while looking at a livestream view of one another as part of an art installation on the street in New York in May.Read moreSeth Wenig / AP

A Portals art installation, which features livestreaming video between two international locations, is coming to Philadelphia, with work apparently beginning Friday at LOVE Park.

The Portals organization confirmed to the Axios news outlet on Friday that Philadelphia would be one of the next locations, but did not provide further details, including where the other portal will be located. A Portals spokesperson could not be reached by The Inquirer for comment.

Posts on social media Friday showed workers setting up a large disk at LOVE Park.

A spokesperson for Philadelphia Parks and Recreation, which oversees LOVE Park, could not be reached for comment.

The Portals project was created by Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gylys, and most recently was installed in New York City and Dublin, Ireland. The inaugural installation was set up in 2021, connecting Vilnius, Lithuania, to Lublin, Poland.

According to the Portals.org website: “Portals are technology art sculptures. They connect to a network of identical sculptures all over the planet. Each Portal is located in the public space, providing a real-time, unfiltered livestream 24/7 that is frequently rotating between different Portal locations on Earth.”

The New York-to-Dublin portal was activated in May and ended last month.

One person posting a photo of the LOVE Park disk expressed skepticism that people in the city would behave for the livestream.

“I’m sorry is Philly getting an international video portal? This cannot end well,” wrote @Kylefromphilly.

Indeed, the New York-to-Dublin livestream was temporarily shut down because some people began showing pornographic or otherwise offensive content to the portal cameras.

The portal was reactivated with safeguards, including a video-blurring feature for people who got too close to the cameras.