INSTALLATIONS
55
A lack of audio makes hand gestures and facial expressions the main form of communication for passers-by
overarching mission – to simply be ‘a bridge between cultures worldwide’, according to Klaus. “The invitation is for people to meet above language barriers. Not everyone speaks English, but everyone shares the same universal language. If you just wave or smile – we know everyone can connect in that way.” MIRROR IMAGE With a lofty project like this – and one that’s increasingly in the public eye – things can occasionally go wrong. The Portals team views these ‘errors’ not as errors at all but as par for the course. “Part of the appeal is that you never quite know what to expect,” suggests Klaus. “It’s live. It’s 24/7. It’s unfiltered.” Technical difficulties can happen. At their heart, the Portals encourage interaction, and sometimes, “people get a little bit carried away,” Klaus laughs. “That’s something we don’t want to interfere with. They’re a window but also, in a way, a mirror: a reflection of society. Whatever happens in front of the screen is, from our perspective, part of the artwork, and we want to maintain that.” But even this passive approach has its limits. “Practically speaking, our partners need to ensure that there’s safety and public decency,” says Klaus, who details the Portals ’ latest efforts into mitigating antisocial behaviour. “The main issue was people getting too close. There’s a video of some guy in Dublin climbing on top of the structure and putting his face down into the camera. On the New York side, people were holding their phone screens directly in front of the camera. That’s not ideal,” Klaus remarks matter-of-factly. “People should respect the Portal and remain at a certain distance. We have retrospectively implemented a proximity sensor, so if you climb or step up on the Portal or get right in front of the camera, it triggers the live stream to blur.”
glass. “They’re intentionally very heavy and large,” Klaus explains, to “counter the trend of all kinds of devices getting smaller and slimmer. It’s something of a different perspective, inviting people to not look at it as a screen but rather as a monument, seeing through a window to another place.” The screens themselves are formed of weather-resilient, outdoor LED panels provided by a French company called Artixium, while the cameras come from Cisco. “For the software,” handled by Video Window, “the main requirements are that it needs to be encrypted, safe and hack-proof. Besides that, we are also looking for technology that is low latency; it needs to be robust and high quality,” Klaus argues, noting that the
video streams are nearly instantaneous, with latencies in the milliseconds. Rather than pairing two cities and calling it a day, the Portals act as a group, “where each location is connected to everyone else. The live stream rotates in three-minute intervals,” explains Klaus. “It’s not about a two-way partnership. We’re building this idea that you join the network as a city, or a region.” Audio is notably lacking from the live streams, and this is intentional. “There are two reasons,” begins Klaus, the first being general noise. “Logistically, if you have a Portal at a street juncture or in the city, it would be very difficult to communicate with there being a crowd of people on both sides.” The second reason goes back to the project’s
Powered by FlippingBook