For the first time, students from NSU’s Art + Design program participated in the Art + Stroll in downtown Fort Lauderdale. This is the seventh year of the Art + Stroll event.
This event, organized by Business for the Arts Broward, featured an immersive augmented reality exhibition created and performed by the students. The event attracted locals with a lineup of live art performances, an art exhibition and free admission for attendees.
This event provided NSU students with a platform to showcase their innovative work while engaging with the South Florida art community.
Kolos Schumy, assistant professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts, accompanied the students and came up with the idea for a collaboration with his students.
“This was the first time that [an NSU] student group had attended this event, so it was a great opportunity to try something new and put on a public art performance,” Schumy said.
The students were working on art centered around the theme of marine conservation. The artwork featured included an octopus, a diver, an underwater treasure chest and more.
“We had a mission here, which was to use art to promote the importance of protecting what is under the water. I had already done a virtual takeover of the NSU Art Museum with sharks, so I thought ‘let’s take over Las Olas Boulevard’ with marine life as well to bring awareness to global warming,” Schumy said.
Schumy said this message is how the group came to be named Art-mARine, a blend of augmented reality, global activism and art.
There were four students who participated in this event alongside Schumy, each with their own augmented reality headsets.
Raul Perez, senior Art + Design major; Haylee Kubat, senior marketing major; Jesse Caruana, sophomore marine biology major; and Valerie Thornton, sophomore marketing major, were the four participating students.
Schumy said three of the students were actively creating art while one student was in “spectator mode,” which projected a live view of both the artists and the art.
“The spectator mode or God mode, depending on what type of games you play, showed the augmented reality as well as the people viewing,” Schumy said.
Thornton offered a unique view, which allowed attendees to see the art being created in real time around them in the street.
Attendees could also use an extra headset to view what the artists were working on. This allowed people to become fully immersed in the art by placing themselves into the virtual plane.
“It was a really exciting experience to try something new and to get other people interested in art and design. A lot of people were really interested and asking a lot of questions, so I think people enjoyed it,” Perez said.
Perez said the extra headset enabled people to experience the art in a new way, which ultimately piqued their interest in art and design. He said the purpose of this group’s involvement in the Art + Stroll was to promote NSU’s Art + Design program.
“We were part of this whole event and pioneering this augmented reality setup where we are all in one room together in order to represent the NSU name,” Perez said.
As well as representing NSU’s Art + Design program, the group also had a specific message they were trying to convey with the art they produced.
The stroll included a fundraiser to raise money to promote art, through the purchasing of art as well as food drink tickets purchased through the BFA.
Along with the walk-through art exhibition, the event featured entertainment, such as a violinist and spoken word poetry performances from the Art Prevails Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to artistic expression and community engagement. Live art demos from artist Leonardo Montoya and Oscar Montoya, even dance performances from BreakinMIA.
Schumy encourages students to attend the Art + Stroll event not only to support NSU’s art department but also to experience art in ways they have never experienced before.
“An event like this is a great opportunity for people to experience new things when it comes to the arts and I think that is a lot of fun,” Schumy said.
Marlee Card and Madison Kasper contributed to this report.
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