If you were planning to check out the Portal, we have some bad news: The 24-hour livestream installation connecting Dublin and New York City has been shut down.
Weighing in at around 3.5 tons and 11.5 feet tall, the Portal is a project by Lithuanian artist and investor Benediktas Gylys, which was unveiled last Wednesday, May 8. It’s intended to link these two cities, sparking delight at the technological capabilities that we take for granted — sometimes, we forget how amazing it is that we can connect with people all around the world so effortlessly.
For most visitors, the Portal sparked some simple, wholesome fun. People danced, waved, held up signs and challenged one another to cross-continental Rock Paper Scissors. But even though the Portal is a real-world pop-up, the behavior around it mirrored that of the internet: A few bad apples can spoil everyone else’s fun.
Some visitors on the Dublin side held up images of swastikas and the destruction of the Twin Towers. Another visitor flashed the camera. The Flatiron NoMad partnership, one of the organizations responsible for the installation, decided to shut it down until further notice, even though they claimed that these incidents had been blown out of proportion. So, the Portal was supposed to stay up for six months, but it didn’t make it six days.
This may not be the end of the Portal, though. The team behind the project is working to figure out how to keep it alive without as much risk.
Regardless of what fate Gylys’ brainchild will meet, the Portal reminded us for a brief moment how cool the internet really is — at least when people are being kind to one another.
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