Park Pause
Cyberscapes Index

Park Pause connects residents to infrastructure with viewpoints of select public parks. We foreground the places where memories form, are shaped into monuments, and re-enacted through events. In the USA, people in power decide the sites of a public park, what monuments are situated there, and what events take place. We can take that power and use it cultivate to true common places that compel casual appreciation, direct engagement, and cooperative ownership.

Park Pause is an open, cyber-physical participatory project. This site hosts an index of digital environments inspired by particular public parks.

Monuments & Events

Public parks shape personal memories. Personal memories interact with public memory in a dance named mythology. People manifest mythology through monuments and events. Monuments and events provide common meaning for each individual's interaction with a park's landscape.

Monuments are a type of sympathetic magic that propels public memory. They look like objects such as sculptures, tire swings, signage, paved paths, and gardens. Events are the rituals that charge the magic of monuments. They are enacted by groups with common traits. They look like collective experiences such as a game of tag, a bazaar, a parade, a music festival.

Cyberscapes of Memories & Dreams

These digital environments exist as event-monuments: interactive places that people can visit simultaneously through the magic mirror of a computer screen.

The Four Smallest Parks in Houston

Memoryscapes

• Shiffick Park
• Smith Park
• Gregg Street Park
• The Park at San Felipe

Dreamscapes

Click the link to wander through the dream versions of the four smallest parks in Houston. This experience does not work on mobile.

• Houston Dream Realms

How to Park Pause

Go to a public park, then:

1. Read the landscape.
2. Document the place.
3. Dream about it.
4. Create art using the previous steps.