NORAD, our biggest local oddity

Since moving to Colorado Springs, I've become (re)enchanted with some of the local oddities. We have a fake cave dwelling, Santa's Workshop (a north pole-themed amusement park), a castle-like shrine to Will Rogers, a cog railway that takes tourists to the top of Pikes Peak where a donut shop and other curios await. There are thousands of attractions within a day's drive of Colorado Springs and countless festivals (like the annual Coffin Race in Manitou Springs or the famed Fruitcake Toss) to entertain and amaze. Getting its start as a resort town, Colorado Springs has always thrived on tourism. We have one of the only 5 star hotels in the state, one of the best zoos in the country, and ready access to astounding parks, views, mountain drives, waterfalls, historic towns, and much more.

One of the weirder (yet nearly invisible) oddities in Colorado Springs is NORAD, which is essentially a military base inside of Cheyenne Mountain. North American Aerospace Defense Command was built in the 1960s during the height of the Cold War to protect the Arctic from attack. It has since been repurposed to fight the drug wars and the war on terror, but was decommissioned as a military base in 2006.

Although it is supposedly unused today, it still boasts a crown of blinking red lights atop Cheyenne Mountain, creating an ever-present constellation in the night sky. If you live in this town, you've wondered about NORAD at one moment or another. Its scale is hard to determine and public access is forbidden. The power of NORAD may have something to do with satellites and lasers, but it is also empowered by collective imagination. As children who grew up at the foot of NORAD, we used to speculate what it was like inside and what sorts of activities went on therein. I imagined that NORAD filled up the entire underside of Cheyenne Mountain, that cities on giant springs housed millions of radars and maps and men who never saw the light of day. At one point I feared that NORAD could read my mind, that it was tracking my thoughts or watching me through the light fixtures.

One of my new favorite things about Colorado Springs is a program on Radio Colorado College called The Big Something. I've started receiving their daily email posts because they include free songs, local announcements, public interest stories, newsy tidbits and more. Its another local oddity that makes me proud to live here.

This week The Big Something notified readers that Popular Science Magazine has recently made their entire 137-year archive available online and although the collection is not yet searchable, the editors of TBS found an illustrated article about NORAD just before construction was completed in 1967. I suggest you read the article yourself as it discusses the massive bomb-shelter still housed inside our "lumpy" mountain. You still can't pass through its 43-ton steel doors, but this article will give you entry into one of our nation's strangest Cold War oddities and the logic behind the continent's "most elaborate and important" defense installation. Read it here

I like to imagine a new future for decommissioned NORAD. What might it become? With numerous military bases being repurposed as parks, artist residency centers, historic landmarks, and more, I wonder what can be done with one of the world's largest and most outdated bunkers? Perhaps NORAD -- the inter-mountain luxury hotel, the artist commune, the underground farm, the world's largest movie theater, the greatest planetarium ever -- will become another favorite local oddity. Even though NORAD is now defunct, this village inside a mountain still conjures the imagination.

Wondering about the Waterpod™

One of the more auspicious yet mysterious projects going on the New York Harbor these days is the barge-turned-commune known as the Waterpod. The mastermind of artist Mary Mattingly, this solar-powered, water-collecting, food growing, waste composting, glittering and domed spectacle has been afloat since June 12 and generating a bunch of interest, press, and amplifying hype. Read the recent NYT article here.

The Waterpod is an extension of Mattingly's work that articulates visions of the future through designy photos and sustainability plans. Since 2000, she's been showing far and wide, primarily presenting photographs of wearable homes called “Nomadographies” that are "autonomous mobile systems of living that are low-tech, ad hoc, and adaptable." These photos are poetic and haunting in their connoted narrative, bringing to mind a more fashionable Robert Parke Harrison. Learn more at: http://www.marymattinglyglobal.org

Three years in the making, the Waterpod is a major collaboration now sponsored by the likes of Columbia University, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the United Nations Inspired Futures and is managed by a 22-person staff. The waterpod hosts a jammed calendar of events and workshops, produced in part by their revolving group of artists in residence. This project is huge!

One guideline is that as a resident you don’t need to stay on board; but while on board and off, residents are encouraged to catalog their activities. Mattingly states, "Everyone will have to help out with repairs, gardening, cooking, and composting. Basically, everyone will learn how to take care of everything. I think this is really important––as the first industrial and technological age in the developed world is drawing to a close, people need to relearn how to do a lot of things."

And the Waterpod is certainly about learning to do things. It appears that Mary Mattingly has learned how to make massive things happen in the name of art and science. Part of what makes this project interesting is that it serves several public functions; it is a grounds for partnerships with schools, community groups, and is self-described as a "public access barge" with "aims to collaborate, to share knowledge, and resources to share problems." Sounds great! My question then arises when visiting the project website (www.thewaterpod.org) to note that the Waterpod is actually "the Waterpod™." At every instance, the title of this project is followed by a Trademark symbol. With all this discussion of open ideas, resource sharing, not to mention the undeniable communalist legacy of which this vernacular belongs, I'm confused; why the need for a Trademark symbol?

After a little wikipedia research, I learned that

"the essential function of a trademark is to exclusively identify the commercial source or origin of products or services, such that a trademark, properly called, indicates source or serves as a badge of origin. In other words, trademarks serve to identify a particular business as the source of goods or services. The use of a trademark in this way is known as trademark use. Certain exclusive rights attach to a registered mark, which can be enforced by way of an action for trademark infringement."

It would appear that The Waterpod™ is a trademarked product or good and any knock-off or replica of this product is defensible by law. But surely the Waterpod borrows technology, style, form, and concept from numerous other scientists and makers. What about Andrea Zittel's Pocket Property? Robert Smithson's Floating Island? Swimming Cities' fleet of floating sculptures? Not to mention the Biosphere and various NASA experiments.

Isn't the experiment of sustainability an open source endeavor? Is not the project of merging art and life something to be shared? I'm sure there's some part of this story that I'm missing, but I must admit that I'm rather disheartened to see that a project like The Waterpod -- with all its great ideas, intentions, and resources -- would feel the need to speak the language of profit, ownership, and otherwise greedy business. I guess you could say the Waterpod has sparked my curiosity about the what, why and how of major art-and-life projects. Perhaps trademarking art projects is part of what makes them sustainable; if this is the case, I really begin to wonder...