Crop Circles Photographs: Steve Alexander

Posted August 11, 2005 by hil

Milkhill Its crop circle season in England now; well, from May right through to September. Many of the beautiful photographs of crop circles, such as the one here at Milk Hill, are taken by Steve Alexander. At his site, temporarytemples, you can see images of the latest circles as they appear, as well browse back through the library of images from previous years.

There is an ongoing debate about whether the circles are man-made or paranormal. Steve writes about his feeling that some UFOs are living organisms, (native to our atmosphere but in a different reality that we might not usually be able to see), rather than pure nuts-and-bolts craft. His belief that there ‘is connection between the crop circles, the people who are drawn to the
crop circles, and the bio-forms that inhabit the crop circle locations’ is far more attractive than the ‘planks and ropes v. aliens’ argument you usually hear.

The circlemakers have an interesting site too. They track crop circle patterns as well as making some on contract. Here, for example, is a Hello Kitty pattern.

(Image reproduced with permission. Thanks, Steve)

Sand Circles

Posted August 9, 2005 by hil

Sand Analogia (Andres Amador) has a lovely gallery of large scale sand circle patterns, made on the beaches of San Fransisco. The patterns are made by raking the sand , exposing the wetter, and therefore darker, sand underneath. Phidelity has other images of the same circles, and includes some designs to be considered for future circles. ~~Glen Tregurtha~~ in New Zealand is also a sand artist, and his gallery is ~~here~~. I can understand liking the ~~impermanence~~, seeing it washed away, rather like the Tibetan monks that spend days making intricate sand mandalas, and then brush it all up in minutes.

Updated 2015: some links broken.

Artist Trading Cards

Posted August 8, 2005 by hil

I’ve been making a few artist trading cards: an edition of just three. One of them is in exchange for Mimi‘s night baby.

Close-ups below.

I find the concept of artist trading cards quite seductive. It must be the idea of miniature art, like stamps and other mailart. But I am also wary of getting into it, on time grounds alone.

For a long time I wanted to make an installation – sometimes I still do! – with the little images I did for The Republic of Pemberley years ago. (Some of them were money and stamps invented for that imaginary world, featuring Colin Firth’s Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, but those particular ones are not online at the moment). The idea was to print and frame the pictures at the scale they were made – 200 x 150 pixels – and then exhibit them in a purpose-built miniature gallery. The way you would view them would be through peep holes, or being able to pop you head up into the individual gallery rooms from underneath. The idea connects into ideas I have long played around with, to do with how cyberspace impacts on our understandings of public and private space.