Instead of just imagining near-future applications of holographic virtual and augmented reality that we interact with individually on a small scale, what if we expanded them to colossal proportions? “Holographic Reality” by Behruz Hairullaev, Brandon Muir and Nicholas Licausi envisions holograms as collective experiences that can provide entertainment, education, information, news and more in public places.

Sci-fi films have already envisioned huge holographic billboards, but “Holographic Reality” takes the concept a bit further with huge sports games, sculptures, light shows and more projected into the sky via modular, skyscraper-like structures, allowing cities to become massive canvases.

The designers note that virtual and augmented reality innovations tend to focus on personal applications like games that people interact with individually more often than in groups. Users are isolated by putting on headsets and absorbing the content alone, disconnecting from other people and the immediate physical world around them.

“Holographic Reality,” on the other hand, brings people together to share experiences like simultaneously broadcasted live events by making holograms part of the urban fabric. It’s not clear exactly how it would work, and some aspects of the project raise immediate concerns, like the prospect of worsening light pollution and making cities feel more cluttered than they already do. But for special events and select locations, this kind of technology could be pretty cool, and it’s probably inevitable at this point anyway.

Life-sized street art interventions play out scenes from a parallel universe on public surfaces all around us in the interactive works of French artist Levalet. Raised in Guadeloupe, France, the artist (also known as art teacher Charles Leval) saw the graffiti that surrounded him as part of the city’s identity, prompting him to look at the streets in a whole new way. What if everyday objects and scenes had an entirely different purpose than the ones we see for them?

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Details of the city that might otherwise be unnoticed by its inhabitants – like dangling cables, clumps of ivy and water spouts – become the genesis of strange, creative and absurd scenes, like glimpses of a world just barely out of reach. While much of Levalet’s work is wheat pasted right onto urban surfaces, he sometimes creates cut-outs that can be layered on top of the fabric of the city, giving it a whole new dimension.

“The street is a place where I can work freely, I don’t have financial or time pressures,” said Levalet in a 2015 interview with Street Art Paris. “And this is mostly about besieging public places, everyday places, and being able to put up work that creates a dialogue with the real world. I like the idea of trying to combine several realities, using the world as a medium, and as a guide for representation, positioning the artistic image, in a place that was not meant for it in the first place.”

“Topography is very important for me, this is why I always check a place before I work on it. I try to mix the world of representation with the real world by playing on the physical cohesion of the situations I put up. Architecture supports my work. Then I work on staging the artwork with photographs. Photography allows me to play with the point of view and to intensify the ‘window-dressing’ dimension of my work. Photography also allows me to create a dramatization within the dramatization by including passers-by or other elements.”

An infusion of art revives a cold, gray public square like a healing draught, drawing people in and encouraging them to stay a while, interact with each other and see their city from a new point of view. Every day we pass through these public spaces in a rush to get to our destinations, hardly noticing the plazas themselves or each other. These playful interactive installations bring color, movement, activities and fun to underutilized or under-appreciated locations in urban settings.

Red Planet Playground in Shanghai

In a shopping center plaza on one of Shanghai’s busiest streets, a textural red playground installation takes a formerly blank, grey space and turns it into a center of play and interaction. Created by the firm 100Architects, it includes a basketball field and lots of objects to climb, sit on, lay on or slide down. “Our proposal arose from a surreal approach, from the intention of breaking the conventional rules of perception, of what is already conceived as a reality, in order to trigger kids’ imagination and creativity as well as immersing them in a colorful experience.”

Liquid Shard by Patrick Shearn of Poetic Kinetics

A shimmering silver wave spanning 15,000 square feet hovers above Pershing Square in Los Angeles like a colossal sea creature out of its element. ‘Liquid Shard’ by artist Patrick Shearn of Poetic Kinetics is made of holographic mylar and monofilament, shimmering as it’s blown around by the wind. “Like fractals recurring progressively, we feel the currents of air on our skin but do not see the larger movements. I wanted to play in that realm with this technology I have been developing.”

Vieux Port Pavilion by Foster + Partners

Architecture firm Foster + Partners turned a Marseilles square upside-down with this mirrored canopy installation. Vieux Port Pavilion, named for its location, adds a new functional sheltered space with minimal visual impact to encourage pedestrians to gather and linger. It may be subtle, avoiding drastic changes to the character of the square, but it acts like a magnet, drawing people in to gaze up at their reflections.

Impulse: See-Saws at the Place Des Festivals in Montreal

Who could pass by a bunch of illuminated see-saws on the street and just keep walking? Impulse by CS Design and Lateral Office inserted 30 of these objects into the Place Des Festivals in Montreal, and while they’re fun on their own, users are in for an unexpected treat when they get on. “Once in motion the built-in lights and speakers produce a harmonious sequence of sounds and lights, resulting in a constantly evolving ephemeral composition.”

Live Young: Evian Swings Activate a Snow Machine

Bottled water brand Evian challenged adults to find their inner children with a pink playground at Canary Wharf in London. ‘Live Young’ consists of swings and seesaws that activate snow machines for an extra magical effect in the hope of helping locals push through the gloom of post-holiday winter. “Evian’s giant playground installations are the perfect way to help stressed workers get in touch with their ‘Live Young’ spirit by letting go and having fun.”

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Plaza Play 13 Artistic Installations Make Public Squares A Lot More Fun

Few art experiences short of virtual reality are quite as immersive as entering a tunnel, literally surrounding yourself with an artist’s vision, blocking out nearly all sensory input not related to the installation. You’re temporarily transported to a dimension that’s not quite real, often unsure where the tunnel might take you. These 15 tunnel-based art installations offer explorable landscapes, inviting you to walk or even crawl through structures made of light, yarn, tape, salvaged wood and textiles.

LED Light Installation in Wellington by Angus Muir

A permanent LED light installation inside a Wellington tram tunnel forms a shimmering, shifting series of arches that blink and change colors. The Wellington Car Cable Company commissioned artist Angus Muir to create the kaleidoscopic landscape of light,

The Pixels Crossing in Paris by Miguel Chevalier

French artist Miguel Chevalier created a temporary tunnel connecting the Forum des Halles and the Place Carée in Paris, with shimmering, multicolored scenes moving in synch with a wave pattern of sound, giving commuters an otherworldly experience as they walked along the transit route.

‘Terminus’ Ribbon Tunnel in Georgia by Megan Mosholder

Placed in the grass outside Atlanta’s Hambidge Center of Creative Arts and Sciences, ‘Terminus’ by Megan Mosholder offers a visual representation of the city’s potential if only they solved their transportation problems. The installation consists of ribbons strung along a frame, and light projected onto them to resemble a blurred train passing through a station at night.

‘Tunel’ by Rejane Cantoni & Leonardo Crescenti

Any visitor stepping inside this interactive kinetic sculpture by Brazilian artistic duo Cantoni-Crescenti watched the architecture of the tunnel shift and transform in response to their own body weight and movement. 92 metal frames are individually controlled by a series of springs and cables, linked in a chain, so that your weight might cause the floor to incline or a section of the walls to rotate toward you.

Tube in Tirol by Numen/For Use

Crawl around in a series of net tubes suspended high up off a gallery floor at this installation by Croatian-Austrian design collective Numen/For Use. ‘Tube’ is a maze of rope tunnels that mostly lead to dead ends, snaking up through an atrium and into the second level of Austria’s Architekturforum Tirol gallery.

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Tunnel Visions 15 All Encompassing Explorable Art Installations

If you were to pass a bunch of colorfully-dressed human figures crammed into a crawlspace beneath a public staircase, you might think they’re mannequins at first, with their splayed limbs and claustrophobic positioning. The bodies are bent every which way, some hanging upside down, all of their faces obscured by hoodies, their positioning absurd. As you walk down the street, you spot more and more of them – folded beneath park benches, dangling from staircase railings, squeezed between utility boxes or piled on top of one another. But then a hand moves, or a muscle twitches, and you realize they’re alive.

The brilliance of choreographer Cie. Willi Dorner’s ‘Bodies in Urban Spaces’ lies as much in the chosen setting as it does in the extraordinary flexibility of his performers. Dressed in vivid track suits, the performers quickly assemble themselves into position, hold their poses for an uncomfortably long duration, and then disassemble themselves to run ahead to the next spot and repeat the process. The temporary urban interventions leave no trace when the performance is over, and aim to encourage residents to experience their cities in a different way.

‘Bodies in Urban Spaces’ has been traveling the world since 2007, showing up all over the UK and Europe as well as Texas, New York, Istanbul, Russia and Japan. The performers lead an audience through each city, highlighting various architectural and urban features and how we interact with them as human bodies.

“‘Bodies in Urban Spaces’ is a temporary intervention in diversified urban architectonical environment,” says Dorner. “The intention of ‘Bodies in Urban Spaces’ is to point out the urban functional structure and to uncover the restricted movement possibilities and behavior as well as rules and limitations. By placing the bodies in selected spots the interventions provoke a thinking process and produce irritation. Passers by, residents and audience are motivated and prompted to reflect their urban surrounding and their own movement behavior and habits.”