Underwater Peace Pole
A message from us for 5000 years from now?
I was approached by non-profit organization that wanted to
place a stainless steel peace pole 30 to 40 feet underwater on the floor of the
ocean. I designed a stainless steel peace pole set in a cement pad and devised a method for delivering
it to the ocean floor with nothing more than a fishing boat (which can be read
about here).
This would be a peace pole rooted in the bottom, like peace poles are on land, but did that make sense underwater? It wasn't on land. It was land technology fighting its underwater environment. So next I designed a peace pole that regards the water as an advantage rather than an obstacle. It is buoyant and chained to an anchor to keep it rooted.
Next I experimented with something NASA invented that could keep organic
growth from obscuring the letters. The organization that requested this work kept telling that money was no object and
telling me that they were going to send a deposit, so I was not reserved about spending money on things like testing this in salt water. But they never sent a check. Eventually I stopped working on it. It leaves me with designs
and thoughts that have nowhere to go. And with these pages that I originally posted on this website in order to communicate with them as things developed.
To scale things back, since there no longer was a budget, I stopped experimenting with expensive, high-tech things like NASA coatings to keep algae from obscuring the text and instead decided to hang a scrub brush on a cable for anyone swimming by who wanted to see what it says under the algae.
Click pics to enlarge
Working on this left me intrigued with another thought - using the ocean as a kiln. What if peace poles were designed to degrade in aesthetically interesting ways underwater. To read more about that click here.
If I finish this on my own, someday the GPS co-ordinates might be posted here for divers who want to find the submerged peace pole. But that could be a long time in coming.
Underwater peace poles: Stage Four | Stage Five | Experiment