15 Types of Your Instagrams I Used to ROC the YOL

Remixing your Instagrams at A Light Festival without hashtags

Last weekend Rochester, NY witnessed it’s 2nd Light Festival since 1917!

“ROC the YOL (Year of Light) is a marketing and programmatic initiative to promote a vibrant, regional celebration of the International Year of Light and Light-Based Technologies 2015.” – RocTheYol.com

I had the pleasure of performing at A Street Light Festival. Professional VJ’ing is a serious hobby of mine because I seize any opportunity to connect people with dazzling new media.

Public photos you share on Instagram can have geolocation data attached if you’ve shared to the map.

Knowing this, I developed a way to automatically pull nearby Instagrams from the Festival, manipulate them in real-time, and project them back into the scenery. No hashtags required!

Art wasn’t imitating life – it was finding and dancing with it.

After 2 nights and 3,000 of attendees, there were hundreds of Instagrams to pick and choose from. Here are the 15 types of IGs I found best-suited for live manipulation in my VJ performance:

1. Axom Objects

   Nearby the Festival is the Axom Gallery and Exhibition Space. Because they were adjacent sponsors of the festival, people who took Instagrams of their wares were found by my GPS scans. Use the photo comparison slider to see how Axom Objects were brought to life in my performance.

   
   

   via @vincentoxox

2. The Urban Landscape

   I began capturing Instagrams a week or two in advance for testing. Some of the photos were perfect backdrops for layering other images, live video, and effects.

3. Neon Dancers from Glow City

   Can you imagine the dancers being layered in real time?

4. Dinner

   This candlelit dinner at Good Luck became a kaleidoscopic amusement for hundreds of Festival goers.

   
   

   via @dont_have_a_cow_man

5. Glow City’s Furniture

   

6. Nearby Sculptures

   Using nearby landmarks gave attendees the immediate indication of the locality and immediacy of the imagery.

   
   

   via @fela623

7. The “Seeds” Sculpture

   Close up textures of “Seeds” became walls of a spinning 3D cube.

   
   

   via @robynicle, @lilisarf

8. Rochester Mini Maker Faire’s “Throwie” Wall

   Attendees constructed LED light Throwies and then tossed them up on a ferromagnetic wall. As the wall was filling up with lights, people were taking Instagrams. As that was happening, I was able to find and layer their photos to create new kinetic visuals.
   

   thank you,
   @chrisschiffner, @tadasana, @jesskayho

9. Wall Therapy Murals

   Although the murals were unrelated to the Festival happenings, their presence inspired Instagramers in the area to share. Because it was in the VJ PLZ perimeter of the festival, I was able to download shots of murals and incorporate these assets into the show as hyper-local visual punctuation.

   
   

   via @_budgey

10. Professional Dancers

    Dancers + Visuals is always a crowd-pleaser. I enjoyed using photos of and from @futur_pointeur as an element of the show.

    
    

11. Meta

    When people took pics of my projections I was able to knead it back in the mix.
    

12. Instagram Layouts

    If a picture is worth a 1000 words, a collage can be high value.

13. Silhouettes

14. Restaurant Lighting

    
    via @mskatrinalim

15. Selfies

    Everyone loves a good selfie, especially when it becomes part of a live art exhibit!
    

There was a noticeable economic surge surrounding the event, too!

A Street Light Festival an economic stimulus to Village Gate -some restaurants met or beat sales records Friday. #ROC #ROCtheYOL

— Rachel Y. DeGuzman (@Rachelyd) July 20, 2015

I’d love to show more examples, but I gotta get back to providing professional services!

If you have ideas for your next event, PLZ connect!

Tagged: A Street Light Festival, Instagram, ROC, Roc the Yol, Rochester, ROCTHEYOL, Social Media, The Arts, VJPLZ, Year of Light