Controversial Dublin Interactive Sculpture Draws Mixed Reactions: Portal to Hell or Global Connection?

It rained on a gray afternoon in Dublin but the crowd gathered around the portal ignored the downpour and waved at a man cycling towards the screen on a sunny morning in Manhattan .

He looked back, waved and swayed before regaining his balance and disappearing down Fifth Avenue, drawing cheers from the grieving onlookers on North Earl Street.

Monday was the fifth day of live streaming that has connected Ireland‘s capital with New York through an interactive sculpture and a webcam that allows people to see each other, but not hear.

Seconds after the cyclist, a woman appeared walking her dog. She stopped, looked at the screen and smiled. She picked up her dog and stabbed a paw. The crowd in Dublin, trapped under umbrellas, brought another joy. “I’d love to bring my dog,” said Amy Ferguson, 24.

A crowd at the door in Dublin interacts with a man watching from a New York portal. Photo: Rory Carroll/The Guardian

The quick, playful interactions between people separated by 3,000 miles and five time zones exemplified the optimism of the authorities when the art installation was launched on May 8. “Two amazing global cities connected in real time and space,” said New York’s chief public realm officer, Ya-Ting Liu.

“I would encourage the people of Dublin and visitors to the city to come and talk to the sculpture and send an Irish greeting and kindness to cities around the world,” said the mayor Dublin, Daithy de Roiste.

Not everyone, however, has been following that utopian crisis. Some on the Irish side have burned body parts, while others display images of swastikas and the two towers burning on 9/11. One man made a theatrical performance of snorting what looked like cocaine. The police removed a woman who was bleeding against the airport.

“Portal to hell: NYC-Dublin live video art installation already brings out the worst in people,” lamented the New York Postwho blamed “Guinness-glugging patrons” in Dublin.

Suzanne Byrne, 33, who lives near the airport in Dublin, said she was not surprised. “Why did they put him here? They are all mad on this street. At night it’s like The Purge,” she said, citing the Dystopian movie license.

Designed by Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gylys, each structure has an 8-foot-wide canopy and weighs 3.5 tons. The New York portal is at the intersection of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. His group is in Dublin at the corner of North Earl Street and O’Connell Street, the heart of the inner city. The project is set to continue until the autumn, although some commentators have questioned whether provocative behavior will stop the trial.

A pair of matching ports in 2021 connected Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, with Lublin in Poland. The artist Paul St George connected London and New York in 2008 through a device called the Telectroscope, which had dials in the style of Jules Verne and flourishes.

The cold and wet did not stop tourists and locals from staying and taking selfies at the Dublin portal. Most were happy, all curious. They watched a young New Yorker walk past the screen, only to return and watch in puzzlement as people laughed at her. She smiled, pointed at her watch, pretended to type and said “gotta go to work” before disappearing.

“I saw it on Instagram and had to come. It’s great,” said Sarah Jackson, 23, a student. She was phlegmatic about the reports of anxiety. “It’s a bit wild. It shows the good and the bad of Dublin.”

Sandy Garrido, 32, a tourist from Chile, said she first saw it on TikTok. “It’s so much fun to connect with people this way.”

Justin Miller, 28, an American who studies history at Trinity College, Dublin, said that he jokingly asked friends in the US to visit the New York portal. It destroyed the reputation of the Irish side. “We hope it’s mostly a good thing rather than people being weird. It shouldn’t take him away from the sport.”