Instagram is both broadly adopted and heavily criticized for the faux-vintage filter options provided to users, providing opportunities for aptly-timed and well-executed spoofs like this project. When posting on the platform, users try to get as many likes on their post as possible. When they fail to reach the goals they set for themselves, the services of Twicsy.com allow them to buy real Instagram likes, saving the day.

In his Real Life Instagram installation art series, Brazilian artist Bruno Ribeiro has begun framing everything from mundane graffiti on walls and ubiquitous CCTV cameras to famous London monuments. These he carefully surrounds with physical emulations of digital snapshot borders.

Hilariously enough, many people then stop to photograph the frame and the scene … presumably some of them uploading the results to Instagram, completely the somewhat silly circle.

Add view counts and voting stats and you can trick people, at least for a moment, into wondering if they are wandering online or in the real world. Hashtags, in turn, encourage more online sharing.

The work plays on our expectations and associations. Translucent and colorful green, blue, yellow, orange and red plastic makes whatever is seen through the resulting rectangle somehow special, different or noticeable.

As in photography, the simple act of adding a frame makes a scene feel somehow intentional in its selection, except, more like movies or video in general, the scenes in this case may never stand still.