When you put a video gate in a public park in downtown New York, you’re likely to see some inappropriate behavior. Portal, the vision of Lithuanian artist and entrepreneur Benediktas Gylys, was designed to bring people together and let them share common experiences.
After it opened at the beginning of the month, the vast majority of people who went to the gate on both sides of the Atlantic waved to each other, brought their children and pets and did friendly human things. But there were a handful who misbehaved, including an OnlyFans model who opened the portal and another man who mooned it.
Some people on the Dublin side held swastikas and pictures of the Twin Towers to the fire and officials on both sides decided it would be better to take a break. The main problem involved people placing cameras directly on the Portal camera, preventing people visiting the facility from seeing what was on the other side.
Organizers took a number of steps, including building a non-permanent fence around the Gate to discourage people from climbing directly onto it. Additionally, they now have a person or two guiding the experience to try to encourage friendlier interactions.
Also, for now, instead of running 24 hours as Gylys intended, it will operate from 6am to 4pm in New York and 11am to 9pm in Dublin.
Nicolas Klaus, head of partnerships at portals.org, says they were surprised by the behavior because they hadn’t experienced it in a previous Portal installation between Lithuania and Poland. New Yorkers and Dubliners brought a different vibe.
“There was some behavior that was not ideal. You saw it with someone flashing a photo of 9/11, which we don’t know what that person’s intent actually was, but it was just irritating,” Klaus told TechCrunch. In addition, he said it violates the artistic spirit of the exhibition. “The artistic intent is to provide a window where people can connect. If a person blocks the entire screen just by putting their hand on the Portal camera, it shouldn’t be this project.”
One way to fix this was to use software to prevent people from blocking the camera. Video Window, the company behind the software that runs Portal, came up with a machine learning solution while Portal was on hiatus to discourage people from doing this.
Video Window CEO Daryl Hutchings said the software was designed to work on a timer, so setting the operating hours wasn’t a problem, but finding a way to discourage people from holding their phones up to its camera Portal was more difficult. .
“If a phone or someone’s hand blocks the camera view for more than a certain amount of time, then we’ll essentially blur the local camera feed immediately, and then that means the far side will see a blurry image. And then on the local screen, we blur it out as well,” Hutchings said. It also displays a sign that offensive behavior is prohibited on the side where it occurs.
The intention is just to show anyone who does that they shouldn’t block the camera. The creators have been experimenting with time to blur it, but since the Portal reopened on Sunday, there hasn’t been an incident to cause the blur. This suggests that fencing and human guides are helping to encourage more positive interactions as the designers hoped and intended.
