2024-08-02 08:58:42
The goal is to unite and connect
Connected to the world’s first and only network of sculptures in the Portals, the live broadcast image from now on changes every three and a half minutes and moves to another of the four cities. In this way, individual pairs of cities are no longer connected, but all cities connecting Portals.
“Our idea from the beginning was a Portal network connecting many countries and regions. Yesterday it finally became a reality. The residents of the four cities, despite the physical and social distances separating them, can meet face to face and discover the similarities and humanity behind the cultural differences, share, communicate, glimpse into and feel the everyday life of another city. These sculptures come to different countries as parts of a bridge to a unified world – the Portal Network,” says B. Gylys.
From August 6 Vilnius residents and visitors will be able to meet people from New York, Lublin or Dublin from 15:00 to 22:00. Video rotation between cities will take place during these hours.
The author of the sculptures hopes that someday such Portals will work in every country of the world and thus unite all the people of the planet. New Portal sculptures in Brazil and one of the countries of the Middle East will be added to the network in the near future.
Made a huge impact
Portals, presented in Dublin and New York in May, received great interest and support, attracting thousands of residents and visitors to the capital of Ireland and the largest city in the United States to look across the Atlantic.
Just like when the portals connected Vilnius and Lublin three years ago, the new Portals were widely covered by the world’s media – from CNN, BBC, The Guardian and USA Today to the Daily Mail, The New York Times and many other major media outlets. measures. The portals have also attracted compliments from influential people like Elon Musk. Combined with social media posts, the message about Portaled Dublin and New York reached an audience of over half a billion in the first few days.
About 700 million people learned about the Portal sculptures in Vilnius and Lublin during the first week after they were activated, according to the Go Vilnius agency. people, and a total of 1.5 billion was reached three years ago. human audience.
According to Dovilė Aleksandravičienė, head of the Vilnius city development agency “Go Vilnius”, such unique projects strongly contribute to creating a positive image of the capital.
“It’s amazing to see how a unique work of technology and art created in Vilnius is reaching more and more distant and larger cities of the world step by step, as well as an increasingly large international audience. From now on, Dublin and New York will have a permanent window to Vilnius on their central streets. This is a great opportunity to present Vilnius as an innovative, open city where visionary works are born, offering new ways for the global world to connect and communicate,” she says.
Unique sculptures
Portals currently installed in four countries of the world are unique technological art sculptures. It connects cities with continuous live video broadcasts. In Vilnius, Portal is located near the railway station, in Lublin – in the Lithuanian Square in the city center, in Dublin – near one of the symbols of the city, The Spire of Dublin, and in New York – near the historic Flatiron skyscraper in Manhattan.
Vilnius and Lublin Portals are created as monolithic concrete sculptures. Each of them is 3.4 m high and weighs 11 tons. The Dublin and New York Portals are visually identical to their predecessors, but are made up of individual concrete modules, as well as stainless steel structures and tempered glass, and weigh significantly less at 3.2 tonnes. LED screens, cameras, special computer and software were used for the sculptures.
The first Portals in Vilnius and Lublin were largely financed by the personal funds of Benediktas Gylis. 20 percent the funds were allocated by Vilnius city municipality. The Dublin and New York Portals were funded by project partners in these cities – Simons Foundation and Flatiron NoMad Partnership organizations in New York and Dublin City Council.
2024-08-02 08:58:42