Art Through Motion and Technology
By Isabella Marie Garcia (spookyrose.wordpress.com)
Bringing her expertise all the way down from New York City, Ofri Cnanni led FIU Honors College students and fellow guests from the general public in two interactive workshops intertwining art, modern technology, and the physical space of Vizcaya. For the first workshop of the night, Honors students and guests were positioned in a trail of plastic chairs and sitting/standing positions with drawing boards in hand, pencils and mushed clay erasers ready to take on the ten drawing prompts that were given to each of the participants. As everyone began their prompts, Ofri would ring a bell after a given amount of minutes in order to signal the start of the next prompt, and a command for the participants to shift their current states and viewpoints. With prompts like “Use Text as Art,” where words become the masterpiece instead of graphite lines and contours, and “Elements,” where you as the artist are forced to hone in on one item in front of you and stretch out the potential through your artistic interpretation, Ofri allowed artists, both developed and nuanced, to challenge themselves to draw outside the box of expectations and taught ideals.
During the second workshop of the evening, Ofri allowed for the use of cellphones, and to use them to their greatest capacity as students and guests explored Vizcaya’s Museum and Gardens without barriers. Placing everyone in a single WhatsApp chat, prompts were used once again to spark spur of the moment ideas and finds, as participants walked around in search of photos they could take and send into the chat in order to match the prompt of the moment. Phrases like “Look Up,” “Stay Tuned,” and “FaceTime,” challenged those in the chat to be clever and creative with their finds, and most certainly, the photographs submitted into the chat proved the efficacy of the workshop. By the end of the evening, students and guests alike got to know Vizcaya in a way that most don’t, an evening that allowed you to challenge well-founded concepts and view aspects of modern culture, such as cellphones and group chats, in a refreshing, imaginative light.
To learn more about Ofri Cnanni’s work, please visit http://www.ofricnaani.com/.
Miami in Miami 