A new sculpture that opens Wednesday at New York’s Flatiron South Public Plaza is not your typical work of art. It combines technology, sociology, anthropology and art to let people in two places interact with each other in real time. In this case it is between New York City and Dublin.
The portal itself is an impressive work, weighing 3.5 tons and measuring approximately 11.5 by 11.5 feet. Portals.org, the organization behind the project, didn’t want to reveal hardware specs beyond the size of the video screen, which is about 8 x 8 feet, preferring to stick to the idea that it’s a portal rather than a portal a screen.
As the organization describes them: “Portals are an invitation to meet fellow human beings across borders and prejudices and to experience our home – planet Earth – as it really is: united and one.” They were originally created by Lithuanian entrepreneur Benediktas Gylys designed.
While the concept is cool, the underlying software technology comes from Video Window, a British company that originally developed software and hardware to connect remote workers—at home or other offices—with an always-on connection. In this case, they took the same concepts and applied them to the portal.
Daryl Hutchings, CEO of Video Window, says the portal needs many of the same features as a business, with some limitations. “All video conferencing software is fundamentally designed for scheduled meetings. So you make an appointment, click the link and then it takes X amount of time,” Hutchings told TechCrunch. “So that’s all well and good if it’s a scheduled call, but of course if you’re using a constant connection like the portal, you’re bound to experience connection issues.”
When these problems occur, most software eventually gives up, but Video Window is designed to resolve the connectivity issues via their APIs and move on, which is essential for this use case.
Another important aspect of this always-on technology is ensuring its security. You don’t want other people to be able to take control of the connection and Video Windows software also helps in this regard.
Nicolas Klaus, head of partnerships at portals.org, says security was an important consideration for the city before agreeing to the installation. “The cities we work with, including New York, are concerned about data security. Can we ensure data protection?” Hutchings says this is built into the software, so it’s not possible to “zoom” a portal like we saw in the early days of the pandemic.
Klaus said the fact that they work with Video Window, which counts many well-known companies among its customers, has helped provide peace of mind when working with governments on security issues. “The fact that Video Window has worked with very established customers such as Netflix, Apple and SAP, as well as some of the largest companies that also value data security, has also been very helpful,” he said.
Governments are sometimes concerned about having a constant connection to another country, but portals.org has been building these installations since 2021. It started with a portal that connected Vilnius (Lithuania) and Lubor (Poland), and so far it has succeeded in doing so Resolve issues effectively with participating countries.
“And just the experience of being able to maintain a 24/7 live stream in other cities with almost no interruptions over the last three years has given Dublin and New York City a lot of confidence to join the network,” Klaus said.