| Summary: | In place of an indigenous culture, Houston has gathered an industry devoted to deploying generic, understandable, manmade environments in places they otherwise might not seem to belong. This project is a website that attempts to link the history of Houston to recent major transformations in the American landscape: the seeming homogenization of urban, suburban, and exurban areas; the increasing isolation of people and buildings from their natural surroundings; the rise of generic approaches to specific problems. Two stories illustrate and mythologize this process: how Brownwood subdivision, a once-elite neighborhood just outside Houston city limits, slowly sunk into the surrounding bay, was abandoned, and turned into a marsh preserve; and how engineers altered and repackaged the American flag so that it could be planted on the moon. A short series of exhibits intersects with the stories and allows visitors to the website to trace their own paths between idea and narrative.
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