This is an art sculpture. Human behavior is part of the experience. I don’t agree with censoring art. People can and should interact with the sculpture however they want. Just don’t vandalize it.
I don’t have any problem with people flashing the camera. Or holding up a political sign. It’s all a form of communication. That’s how the exhibit influenced them.
It would be awesome to have a circular sculpture with eight video portals to various cities around the world. The portals could view each other when no one was standing there.
How do you feel about it? Should it be guarded and censored?
Briefly there was a giant circular video screen in NYC and another in Dublin. It showed a live video image between the two cites. In very short order people stated being vulgar so they shut it down.
Reminds me of the Palantír from Lord of the Rings. I like this concept and I agree to just let it run - as long as no one is damaging the thing or each other or spreading hateful messages to people on the other end. The upside is seeing people, regular, everyday people, who live somewhere else going about their business - I think the idea is to humanize. The downside is lewd behavior that could be very offensive to someone on the other end, but I think the positives can outweigh the negatives. And jeez, can we just get over ourselves already for being offended at seeing human breasts.
A video portal could be placed in an exhibit hall. There would be less obnoxious behavior. A public sidewalk may be too large of an audience. Especially if troublemakers blocked regular vistors that wanted the experience.
But, I was OK with the way it was originally installed on a sidewalk. Give it time and see if people lose interest in flashing body parts. It’s not fun if people ignore the bad behavior.
I realize the cynical “of course people were jerks” reaction is a natural one (and one I had myself), but allow me to offer an alternate perspective: what a cool idea and how amazing are the creative people who came up with and executed it!? People can be so incredibly innovative and clever, so I choose to focus on that aspect in this instance. We need more things like this in our lives - bring back the portal!
I agree. Nobody is forced to look at it, after all.
They had one in a library in Chester here in the UK a while ago (cannot now remember where it was linked to), but I don’t recall any protests about it.
Of course, this WAS the UK. No sex, please, we’re British…
Not from our side, anyway…
I actually find it a bit interesting. Sure, we can all say that this sort of misbehavior is expected. But ask ourselves why.
It’s not like people can’t put up hateful signs or flash strangers in public already. Sure, the people on the other side can’t physically react to you, but you’re undoubtedly being recorded. And there is security there who are watching.
My first guess is that it has to do with the novelty. If so, then I would expect incidents to drop over time. Though not completely, since the installation will always be novel to new people. But maybe by then it would be small and more manageable.
But I don’t know. We’d have to let the art experiment stand to see. Some restrictions might be able to be implemented, but they can’t be too strong.
So a viewer in Dublin would look through the portal and see… a room? That wouldn’t work. To get the full impact, the portals have to be out on the sidewalk.
Why not just enforce the laws against public indecency the same way they’d enforce them without the portal? Except even easier, because, duh, there’s a camera right there?
How do you define indecency? Some OnlyFans model flashed her boobs at Dublin. It’s not illegal to be topless in NYC (there is caselaw). Someone in Dublin showed a picture of the plane crashing into the WTC. Trolling to be sure but not illegal. There was rude behavior but I didn’t hear of anything illegal.
Oh. If there wasn’t even any illegal behavior, then just keep the piece running. I don’t think that “New Yorkers are sometimes rude” is a newsflash to anyone.
