Cities around the world party with large-scale light festivals

Move over, holiday lights. Large-scale light installations that blend contemporary art and technology are taking off as a trend, lighting up the night from New Orleans and Baltimore to Sydney and London.

Many of these free light festivals include interactive displays that turn spectators into participants who can change colors or patterns by moving or playing a game. The events are also tourism magnets, attracting locals and out-of-towners alike to waterfronts, historic districts and other neighborhoods on dark winter nights and other periods when tourist activity may be low.

London counted more than a million visitors to its first light festival over four nights in January this year. The Lumiere London event included a larger-than-life projected elephant stomping through the air, a digital painting at Westminster Abbey and sculpted human forms flying above buildings.