Playwright Scott Cohen Creates Interactive Art In Miami Beach

Scott Cohen, NY based playwright and artist will create a twelve-foot high metal Life Cube art installation for Miami Beach at SoundScape Park in front of the New World Center. This interactive, collaborative art project will be open to the general public from Tuesday November 19th through Sunday morning, November 24, 2019.

Dovetailing with the New World Symphony's Education Concerts (November 21-22) targeting well over a thousand local students and featured as an attraction on Miami Beach's Culture Crawl (Thursday evening, November 21), the Life Cube will be a beacon for artistic engagement for young and old alike. Cohen has written three plays including "Life List" that ad a staged reading last year in NYC and was a semi-finalist at the selected as a semi-finalist for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, and two shorts ("Polly" and "Hands Up") that have been produced multiple times in the last couple years.

Cassidy Fitzpatrick, VP of Musician Advancement, is enthusiastic about the possibility for creative synergies, stating that "New World Symphony (NWS) is pleased to partner with Life Cube for this installation in November. NWS's mission is to prepare pre-professional musicians for leadership roles in the field of classical music and the Fellows have spent their young careers setting goals and achieving excellence. Inspiration is part of our DNA and we're grateful that Life Cube offers the chance to Miami youth and community members to share their own dreams and goals."

The Life Cube Project emphasizes a dual mission: inspiring participants to write down their goals and dreams, and connecting art with community, involving as many people as possible. Toward that end, The Bass Museum of Contemporary Art is featuring a Life Cube exhibit and workshop for its Family Day programming in the Creativity Center on Sunday, October 27, 2019. Life Cube artist Scott Cohen will be on hand to speak with attendees, encouraging children and family members to write down their goals, dreams, and aspirations, hanging colorful 'Dream-Tags' on the Life Cube wall sculpture panel installed at The Bass.

Artwork created during the workshops will become part of the collaborative Tapestry Wall outside on the larger Life Cube in SoundScape Park later in November. That installation will also feature artist talks, impromptu performances, and mural painting as part of the process, producing a visibly changing art piece as the hours and days progress from start to finish.

The Life Cube Project was born and first presented at the Burning Man in 2011, culminating in its selection and installation as a 24-foot high Honorarium Project in 2015. Concurrently, the Life Cube Project transitioned to connecting art and community in civic environments, and was featured as a major public art installation in downtown Las Vegas in 2014 and 2016; in addition, twelve-foot metal Life Cubes were designed and presented for El Paso's (Texas) Chalk the Block Festival in 2017, Reno's Sculpture Fest, and in the Bronx, NY, among other locations. Over the past months, Scott Cohen, the Project's artist, and his team have designed a unique happening to share with the City of Miami Beach.

From the artist's perspective, Scott says "This is an incredible opportunity for us to use materials like brushed-metal framing, expressing our creativity in fresh, exciting ways for the Miami Beach Life Cube. We're including all the elements most intrinsic to our project mission: interactivity to the max, helping the public experience art-in-process with live painting, and the social impact from the community writing down their goals and dreams and sharing them on the wall of dream tags."

Local artists from Miami Beach will be 'live-painting' murals on the Life Cube during the installation. In addition, students and local residents will have painted hundreds of smaller canvases, which are being distributed free to schools and community centers as part of the Life Cube's community outreach program, arranged in collaboration with the region's school districts, the Bass Museum and New World Center. Scott will be presenting to area schools and civic groups, talking about the importance of setting goals and connecting art with community.

During the Life Cube Installation, visitors to the Life Cube will be encouraged to write their goals, dreams, and aspirations on Life Cube 'Dream-Tags' (also available printed in Spanish), and can hang them on the Cube's Dream-Tag Wall to shimmer together in a colorful array, Participants read what others have written as they add their goals and dreams to those of their community.

The public is welcome to come and be a part of the art, day or night, exploring the art as the murals and tapestry walls change over time, interacting with the Cube and expressing themselves.

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