Hopes and Dreams in the Cube

Your hopes, your dreams, your art; all within a 12-foot-high metal cube.

That is the skeleton of Life Cube. What brings it to vibrant life is you, the Miami public! And artist Scott Cohen, of course.

“I came from a really challenged background, and had big dreams and ambitions,” says Cohen, the driving creative force behind Life Cube. “When I was ten or eleven, I started to write down what I wanted to accomplish in my life, and found over the years that many of those objectives became reality. This art project is based on the belief that if you write down your goals and dreams, the chance of them happening is much, much higher.”

“There’s another factor that went into my creating the Life Cube Project, and that’s a credit to Burning Man,” Cohen continued. “In 2003, I went to the Burning Man festival, and experienced art in a completely new and different way. There everything is larger than life, and you can interact with art. A child at heart, I’ve always wanted to touch, climb on and engage with art and sculpture, something that is generally frowned upon at museums, but that’s the ethos at Burning Man and from that we have Life Cube.”

Rendering of Life Cube in Miami Beach, FL

The Life Cube Project will create a 12-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 is open to the public from Tuesday, Nov. 20 through the morning of Sunday, Nov. 24. Dovetailing with the New World Symphony’s Education Concerts (Nov. 21-22) targeting well over a thousand local students and featured as an attraction on Miami Beach’s Culture Crawl (Thursday, Nov. 21), the Life Cube will be a beacon for artistic engagement in Miami Beach for young and old alike.

The Life Cube Project emphasizes a dual mission: inspiring participants to write down their goals and dreams, as well as connecting art with unity to involve as many people as possible.

Dream-Tag Wall Interaction, part of the Life Cube Art Installation on Miami Beach. Photo courtesy of the artist.

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 the opportunity to paint/draw on smaller canvases, which are all available during the installation and completely free as part of the Life Cube’s community outreach program, arranged in collaboration with Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the Bass Museum and New World Center.

“The Life Cube is a different type of art,” says Cohen. “Instead of coming to see what someone created – something static that has been painted, sculpted, and exhibited – this is ‘art-in-process’ and it changes throughout the installation. What you do, see, and engage with one day will be totally changed on the next visit to the Life Cube. Murals are painted every day and evening, and it’s a venue for impromptu performances and music as well. It’s a happening – a moment, and no matter how many photos, videos, or stories you hear about Life Cube Miami Beach, unless you were there to experience it, you’ll never have the complete picture. The Life Cube’s Dream-Tag Wall is composed of the written goals and dreams of hundreds of students involved in our community outreach program, from elementary through university,” explained Cohen.

“Those colorful tags are hung up on the twelve-foot Life Cube’s walls, shimmering in the breeze, and can be read and added to by everyone who participates and comes to the installation.” The Tapestry Wall, composed and curated from hundreds of art pieces, was created by these same students and members of the community.

Life Cube at night. Image courtesy of the artist.

One key feature that the artist points out is that everything about the Life Cube Project is non-commercial and open to the public; there are no tickets, no sponsors, and no vending. Access and participation are “totally and completely free.”

Cohen and his team hope that as many Miami residents as possible visit the Life Cube and add their own dream, their own story, to this one-of-a-kind collaborative art effort.

“We hope Miami will be encouraged to take pictures, post on social media and bring their own talent and energy to the Cube,” Cohen said. “Most importantly for me, I hope they’ll be inspired to continue to write down their goals and dreams. I hear from ‘Cube-ists’ all the time, via email, posts and smoke signals, about how their dreams came true after they wrote them down interacting with the Cube in past installations. Those are the stories that really make me proud of what we’ve accomplished.”

Visit the Life Cube at New World Center, located at 500 17th Street, Miami Beach from Tuesday, November 20 to Sunday, November 24, 2019. Learn more about the artist and his Life Cube project by visiting his website at https://lifecube.wpengine.com/