One of the most prominent festivals dedicated to the art form is the long-running “Fête des Lumières in Lyon. The tradition there of placing candles in household windows in honor of the Virgin Mary stretches back more than 150 years, and the modern incarnation of the festival began incorporating 3-D-mapping techniques in recent years. On Dec. 8, the opening day of the festival, the installation “Urban Flipper” turned the facade of an old theater that once played host to Sarah Bernhardt into the world’s largest interactive pinball machine, adorned with clownlike touches that resembled a large white mustache and six orange eyebrows. Balls ricocheted around the facade, bouncing off whiskers and colliding with eyebrows, accompanied by a barrage of video-arcade noises and exhilarating light effects.

In the United States experimental video projection festivals have begun popping up on both coasts and in between. Ethan Vogt, producer of the Bring to Light: Nuit Blanche New York festival in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, says that this medium can play a critical role in the evolution of public art: “It is too important to exist in just a guerrilla way.”

Matthew Clark, a founder of the London collective United Visual Artists, said that what excites him the most about video mapping technology is that it enables him to break away from the traditional flat rectangle that most people associate with film. “It’s quite liberating,” Mr. Clark said. “Suddenly anything can be your canvas.” (His team also works with motion-activated sculpture, like the interactive light-and-sound cube that responds to human presence installed at the Coachella Valley Music and Art Festival last year. It later traveled to New York during a Creators Project event in October). The 2012 Olympic Delivery Authority has commissioned United Visual Artists to join in designing a “stadium” to be made solely of fabric and light.

Some video mapping art has an activist tinge. In November Mark Read, an artist and activist, organized the Occupy Wall Street projection, nicknamed the “Bat Signal,” and recruited Mr. Nova and Mr. Skola for their large-scale projection savvy. Mr. Read said he is now helping to create a sort of “Batmobile” with projection capabilities that will visually spread the word that the Occupy movement is still alive. “It’s like Commissioner Gordon sending out a call for aid and a call to arms,” he said.

Along similar lines, about six years ago the new-media artist Evan Roth helped pioneer the use of a digital laser pen and a video projector to write graffiti in public spaces, much as a traditional graffiti artist would use a spray can. Art collectives in cities like Berlin and Belo Horizonte, Brazil, now use Mr. Roth’s methods to tag buildings, bridges and schoolyards. “It’s the kind of activism that isn’t just making a sign,” said Mr. Roth, 33. “And it’s something people my age might be interested in taking part of irregardless of the politics.” But despite the potential subversive thrill, this graffiti lasts only as long as the projector is on, which is why video sites like YouTube are vital in preserving it.