Downtown Alliance and Salt Lake City solicited artists to design, build and install mini parks for their Parks Pop Up on Main event during the Downtown Garden Stroll. They were looking for public art installations that incorporated elements of art, playfulness and fun and featured floral elements. Now the people of Salt Lake City have the opportunity to engage with a one-of-kind Zen garden, known as “The Floral Quarrel Park”.

Built to be a modern garden of Zen, nested amongst the chaos of a bustling metropolis, this park was destined to become Salt Lake City’s prime destination for relaxation and peace… A place where people could retreat from their everyday lives, sit down, rest, and take in the restorative silence of nature. Unfortunately nature isn’t silent anymore. Some jerk gave these interactive flowers a cell phone, a Twitter account, and a voice… and they haven’t shut-up since.

The interactive aspect was achieved by bringing four distinct personalities into the park. These personalities become apparent as the flowers begin to talk and interact with the public, and often bickering and quarreling among themselves. Visitors will quickly see the ingenuity programmed throughout the installation as their movements and proximity to the plants trigger different scenarios that the plants respond to.

The mini park has various environmental sensors built-in that, once triggered, will provoke a series of dialogues or reactions from the flowers. Proximity sensors detect when individuals are passing by and the flowers respond, moving and beckoning them over. Visitors can also trigger light sensors by casting their shadow over them, but they will quickly learn not to interfere with the flower’s sunlight as the flora tend to berate them. Then there’s the mystery button. Which is just that, a mystery; user beware! Lastly, these flowers don’t like the buzz of bees as much as they prefer the tweets from Twitter. Find the hidden hashtags throughout the park and discover more ways to interact with this digital-age park!