A little more than a month has passed since Philly's Portal art installation debuted at LOVE Park, connecting visitors via livestream to identical sculptures in Ireland, Poland and Lithuania.
The Portal would never have come to Philly without the backing of Joe Callahan, a Drexel University graduate on the board of the global Portals Network. Callahan is the founder of spatial computing company Ciright Systems, which makes virtual reality models for industrial training. His company also owns Sansar, a virtual reality network where creators build visualizations of various environments.
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"It's a creative community where people can make games, clothing and objects inside our network," Callahan said.
To promote the Portal in Philly, Callahan developed an online game where his character – wearing an Eagles jersey – explores a virtual LOVE Park. Callahan's avatar can walk through the park's spray ground, do silly dances, and play beer pong and corn hole. It takes a little bit of practice to get the mechanics down, but it's a fun way to interact with LOVE Park. It's also possible to walk through the Portal and virtually travel to Dublin, Ireland, and see the area surrounding that city's video sculpture.
"The whole purpose of gamifying it is really to put Philadelphia in a global showpiece for people to see how great it is, without negativity," Callahan said during an interview Monday. "I'm so proud of being from Philadelphia. I call it the forgotten city. People have forgotten how many firsts came out of Philly – the first computer with the ENIAC, the first hospital, the first public school system, the first library."
Sansar hosts more than 5,000 virtual reality worlds that are open to the public, and there are more than 400,000 users in the company's global network. Its most popular worlds depict the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and the moon.
Sansar's history traces back to San Francisco's Linden Labs, the company that created the popular virtual-reality game "Second Life." Linden sold off Sansar, and it had other owners before Callahan took control.
The worlds on Sansar are best explored using an Oculus VR headset, but they also can be viewed on a Windows desktop computer. (The LOVE Park demo is accessible on Mac OS because of a technical patch, Callahan said, but the company is working on making its worlds more broadly available for Mac users).
The Portal sculpture that's now in Philly formerly was installed in New York City. When the decision was made to move it, Callahan got in touch with Michael Newmuis, the director of Philly's 2026 semiquincentennial celebration, to discuss bringing it to LOVE Park.
"I said I can get it to Philly. I can make the donation. All I need is the support for programming and activations that give us the ability to highlight Philadelphia," Callahan said. "It was probably the most efficient thing that ever happened in Philadelphia."
For now, the Portal is still in the early stages of event programming.
Last week, before the Eagles played the Washington Commanders on "Thursday Night Football," the Portal held a live pre-game show with former player Brian Mitchell. It was streamed to the portals in Vilnius, Lithuania, and and Lublin, Poland.
"It was really just a test to see how it would come off, and we were really surprised with the quality of the livestream and the interaction with the people who showed up," Callahan said. "Now we know we have a platform to do live streaming at the Portal."
Callahan has been pleased with Philly's engagement with the Portal so far. The sculpture is temporarily located next to the visitor center at LOVE Park, at 16th Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard, to make room for the annual Christmas Village. It will be moved back to its original location in the park after the holidays, and Callahan said the Portal may ultimately find a permanent home at Dilworth Park.
Callahan said the Portals Network will be developing more upcoming events to foster connections between host cities, and Brazil and Ethiopia are expected to get portals that will be linked to Philadelphia.