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I make circles because I'm an artist and I regard circlemaking as part of my artwork.
Circle... there's a tradition of circlemaking stretching back 20 years, I'm...
I'm a part of that tradition, and there are certain things that making a crop circle
demands and that does involve quite a lot of work, planning and such like so...
if people regard that as trouble then I guess that's what it is, but to me it's
just part of the activity of being an artist, of making art and maybe
a slightly odd, peculiar way I suppose.
Well, making circles is not a joke, I...
I mean it is funny sometimes but generally it's not a joke.
I mean I kind of regard making circles is actually quite a serious activity
I mean it occupies a lot of my time, a lot of my thoughts,
and... I mean I think that circles function in quite a profound way for a lot of people
Crop circle making is a kind of selfish act in a way, when you make a circle
although you're the author of it because it's important that circles
are not seen to have human authors you lose control of it
and therefore people I suppose can do what they like with it.
I mean I actually think the photographers that take such stunning photographs
deserve every penny they get from the photographs
and I'm also particularly pleased when farmers make money from...
by charging people to enter the formation.
I don't particularly crave publicity for myself but I do want my work
to be seen in a public context and interact in a public way with
large numbers of people and hopefully often in quite a profound way as well.
I've never pulled the wool over anyone's eyes actually and
I've got no really any interest in doing that.
Making circles is really like any other aspect of my art making.
There's nothing suspect about it. I'm simply going out into the field and laying
down a design and I suppose with that design goes a question to people:
what does this mean for you, why is it there and how is it there.
People are free to answer those questions how they will.
I'm really interested in what other people believe
and part of the reason for making circles
I suppose is... it is like some kind of...
curious amalgam of one's going out and making a circle and...
and feeling that you've met some kind of challenge,
some kind of technical challenge
and at the same time then watching how other people absorb
your creations and interpret it and speculate, analyze it, whatever...
So, in that sense, what people believe is fundamental
to the practice of making circles
but not in a sense of mocking the belief,
in fact you're actually interacting, engaging the beliefs,
there is a totally symbiotic relationship with the circlemakers and
the people that research them, the crop circle researchers,
UFO researchers, whatever they like to call themselves.
Actually the risk of being caught and prosecuted is very low,
the fields of southern England are numerous and very large
and it's almost impossible to be detected whilst you're making a circle.
On one occasion I was lost for two hours in a field
trying to find two other people in the field who I knew were there but...
despite knowing they were there it still took me over two hours to find them.
Now imagine if you went into a field
and you didn't really know whether there was anyone there,
the chances of finding anyone are so remote
and so the chances of being discovered are so remote, really.
I'm not attacking a belief system, but I certainly am interacting with it
and engaging with it, I mean I'm actually myself very attractive to
an unorthodox hoax I suppose what other people call
an unorthodox hoax or alternative beliefs systems.
And as an artist it's... part of my art work is engaging with them
in a variety of different ways and crop circles is just one.
So in that sense it's important
but it's not an unorthodox hoaxed beliefs system like this church
or some other established (...) hoaxed belief system,
whether they'd be overtly very religious or other ways.
I mean, I can't... don't think any circlemaker
could merely just find what they do in the field, it's not possible, obviously...
it's criminal and in that respect
it's hard to take any moral position against it
and I don't seek to do that, but I do hope... I do bring
bring some kind of experience to people who visit them that they think is worthwhile,
they don't feel that this has not been waste of time
and they've got some kind of pleasure from it and some sort of enjoyment from it,
or maybe some even more profound on that.
My activities yet sometimes cause trouble from believers,
I think really because they say a
a climate of misunderstanding between circlemakers and researchers.
Circlemakers are generally rather caricatured in the minds of...
researchers and as a consequences there's a certain amount of vitriol directed
against circlemakers not just myself, other circlemakers as well.
As I say I think its really a result of a misunderstanding.
I've had a couple of phone calls and some letters;
I wouldn't call them a campaign of hatred or paranoia in any sense. I think...
that they are just cases of misunderstanding, but there is a
curious paradox where circles researchers love the creations that we artists make
but on the other hand hate the idea that they are made by the a...
by artists and not by some sort of paranormal entity.
So, as a consequence, they're stuck somewhere in between these two things.
Yeah the first time, actually one of the first times that I was visiting the circle,
I actually took a photograph which
I suppose what could be called a photographic anomaly appeared on;
I surely offer that time I started making circles
and that very day when I went out and took that photograph
was a kind of weird conversion for me because it was also the first day
when I really twigged that the circles probably were made by people,
but at the same time I experienced something which
was seen genuinely and still seems genuinely anomalous.
And that's really set the tone for my circlemaking activity since then,
and which was 1991, since that time I have had probably half a dozen sightings,
some of them have been photographic,
mostly have not been, mostly have been whilst I've been constructing a circle,
and as a consequence of that have been witnessed by numbers of
people including on two occasions journalists,
and these were mainly flashes of light, a ball of light and a column of light as well,
recently that we were witness.
And they've inspired me to go on and do other things as well,
I have also... I made another series of art work based on those experiences.
Absolutely bizarre coincidences happen all of the time. I can remember...
early, my early circlemaking days in the early 90's when I made a formation
and overnight another circle was added to it, which was actually on the diagram
that I had with me, but we decided not to put that circle
on the formation, I came back the next morning and the circle was there;
I don't know what to make of that at the time and I guess I still don't really.
Well, it's clearly not a new art form because
Doug Bower has been making circles for 20 years,
and in my opinion actually he has done something absolutely remarkable and...
kind of deserves the credit which I'm sure he'll never should get for it unfortunately.
But in addition to that I think that there is a tradition in the paranormal
of intervention, creative intervention by individuals.
It probably stretches back for centuries. I think you can see that in...
many many different forms from UFO photographs,
to perhaps going right back even to the Turin Shroud,
to séances of spiritualists in the 19th century;
it is a tradition of some forms of creative intervention
which verges on deception sometimes and
crop circles are just another manifestation of the same thing, I think.
Making a formation yeah can be very, very exciting I suppose, I mean certainly
you do get a kind of adrenaline hit from it, but the adrenaline hit is...
I think due to being in a very, very extreme
situation which also is quite alien in many ways.
You eye... the pupils dilate massively so...
your whole experience, visual experience and your senses, your visual senses,
are completely thrown... it's almost like seeing in
kind of infrared or negative or something it's impossible to judge distances
and shadows appear where they shouldn't be, thing move on the corner of your eyes,
your eyes play all kinds of tricks with you; and at the same time
you've got this technical challenge
of putting something in the field in an incredibly short amount of time;
that is really pushing what's humanly possible to do,
added to which you're trying, your damnest not to be caught anyway.
So, yeah, it can be pretty exciting, pretty hairy.
I have no idea rationally what crop circles are for, and...
I'm making'em because I'm an artist and I see them functioning, as art pieces
in a very public way I think all other people think there may be other things
and for other things, so beyond that I can't really say.
Well there is a number of things in designing of the circles that are interesting,
and I think characterized formations
or the recent formations anyway of the last few years
that they contain often, we design them so, they contain
very specific geometric relationships which are usually
related to the division of a circle by 2,3,4,5 or 6 parts.
And as a result of that the geometric ratios they contain
develop into geometric patterns from those basic divisions
and the other thing as well about the design is that they often,
we often try and make them so that they somehow
resonate with images that are found in nature,
or images that are found at least in notions about nature.
So, I mean that would include things like spirals or other geometric shapes
that you might find in a natural setting.
Yeah, I mean the sources for some of the designs for circles is nature itself,
many of the circles of the last few years are nature or sometimes on a micro...
microscopic level, often on a macro level as well,
have provided the inspiration for the symbolism of the circles
as well as various geometric relationships
that are embodied in those natural symbols.