There is a hidden model of abstract thinking in the fields of Southern England. To most of us it is known as the crop circle phenomenon and ever since the first sighting of these mysterious circles, flattened into the tall wheat fields of summer, their origins have been intensely debated. Explanations for their existence are wide reaching and include UFO landings, magnetic anomalies, and even sentient whirlwinds. But perhaps no explanation carries as much weight as does the claim that two elderly men from Southampton are the main authors of these occurrences. Dave Chorely and Doug Bower made their first crop circle in 1970 after a few pints at their local pub. Their motivation was the simple idea that it would be fun to try and make it look like a UFO had landed in a nearby wheat field and ever since that night Dave and Doug have continued this practice. They have honed their craft, expanded their talents, and passed on their techniques to friends and followers and over the years their combined collective actions, although prankish at the start, has produced something very profound, something that gets at the root of how we make, deliver, and perceive meaning: a modern myth.

A religion of sorts has sprung up in the wake of Dave and Doug’s first product, its ranks filled with pseudo scientists, UFO junkies, and new-age spiritualists. For these faithful the suggestion that the circles are only the product of two old men and their loyal followers is not only wrong it is also offensive. For them it is the search for the explanation, the misguided coaxing of the truth that is the focus of their faith. And that is what we are left with as Dave and Doug’s final product, not so much a circle in a crop field but rather faith.

“I’d always been interested in UFOs and flying saucers...so I thought I’d make it look like one had landed...,”1 remembers Doug Bower when the men first came forward as being the originators of the circles. While their motivation may have been a combination of stout beer and boyish playfullness, their inspiration was genuine. Both were influenced by UFO culture and even believed in the existence of extraterrestrial life. The circles’ shapes, widely recognized as spiritual (spirals, mandalas) catered to popularly held beliefs about UFOs. In fact, after the circles started to get press time the hoaxers began to provide the ufologists more directly with what they were looking for. They associated light phenomenon with the circles (helium balloons with flashlights), picked locations visible from roads, and even left strange substances behind such as metal filings. At first thought these lengths seem somewhat extraneous and perhaps overtly obvious as a way of getting your circle to be perceived as supernatural, but this just serves to illustrate my point. You must consider the main audience, the ufologists, especially when another practice of Dave and Doug was to make their circles within a ten-mile radius of any Center for Crop Circle Studies group (CCCS) to ensure exposure and success. My point is that some don’t have to go far from home to find a personal truth.

If we take the notion to be true, that Dave and Doug by their actions produce a kind of faith in these people, then it would seem that a need to believe and, in a sense, be fooled may be at the root of our makeup. The people who continue to adhere to the paranormal origins of crop circles in the face of evidence to the counter exemplify this. Once Dave, Doug, and the other crop circle makers came forward with their circle-making confessions they tried everything to convince these circle-believers that they were the circles’ creative force. They have even drawn detailed diagrams of their crop circles before they were made, named the time and place of their eventual appearance, and then mailed these documents to the very people who would, prior to receipt, deem the particular crop circles as those of genuine, paranormal beginnings. But what’s more, these same believers do not change their opinion once they have the mailed evidence. They rationalize the fact that the circles they judged as genuine had been carefully documented before they appeared by saying that the people who sent the letters have an unexplainable “pre-knowledge” of the circles, thereby proving the circles’ paranormal origins even more.

Carl Jung had this to say about seeing what you want:

“In the threatening situation of the world today, when people are beginning to see that everything is at stake, the projection-creating fantasy soars beyond the realm of earthly organizations and powers into the heavens, into interstellar space, where the rulers of Human fate, the gods, once had their abode in the planets.... Even people who would never have thought that a religious problem could be a serious matter that concerned them personally are beginning to ask themselves fundamental questions. Under these circumstances it would not be at all surprising if those sections of the community who ask themselves nothing were visited by ‘visions’, by a widespread myth seriously believed in by some and rejected as absurd by others.”²

So by this the spiritual-less can become pillars of belief, and the mislead can receive visions. For many of us in the high-stakes, high-end experience of modern life a fantasy must take control, something closely akin to the willing suspension of disbelief, and yet much more. In short, faith must occur. The proponents of myth are simply building blocks onto which we can project our fantasy and ultimately our faith in whatever we end up choosing.

What does this mean to individuals like Dave and Doug who are trying to carve out a piece of expression in a contemporary world? Where are the crop circles in this equation? To be the myth is to be in a unique place. The circle-makers know their role: “These designs are huge Rorschach tests flattened into the fields of Wiltshire, deciphered according to the belief systems of those who view them,”³ notes Jim Schnabel, a journalist who has followed crop circles extensively. This idea leaves the circle-makers in a place of undeniable power—a place, as well, of responsibility. The writers of faith have to know their course is, in a sense, just. Schnabel continues on the relationship between hoaxer and belief, “The concepts of art and science, like those in any other area of language, knowledge and culture, do not reside in something universal, ‘out there’; they are grounded locally and socially—they are, for better or worse, what we say they are.” Although a little over simplified for the justification of a hoax, Schnabel says something that is fundamentally true. We make our world. Not only the hoaxer but also the hoaxed. He finishes, “...it may be the scientist who sees a Sign, the hoaxer who is intrigued by an anomalous phenomenon, the pious one who perceives a work of art.”⁴

But then what is it that keeps the crop circle believers coming back when faced with such evidence against them? What is the nature of this desire in us for the frontier, the unexplained? Dave and Doug know all about this kind of desire. It’s how they gauge their success. If their man-made circles are believed by many to be unexplained phenomenon then they have accomplished their goal. But that is not the final point of their exercise. There is also a greater balancing act going on for them, of being the harbinger of faith and desire and that of wanting to be recognized and credited with the end, art-making act.

So what then is the point of balance? For a contemporary myth-maker at what point is concession made? When we look at artists who use this model of myth making in their work, the relationship between what they make and how it is ultimately perceived is a little clearer. Take the artist David Wilson and his Museum of Jurassic Technology located in Culver City, California. It is a staggeringly successful artistic work when considered on its own merits, but, comparatively, it is less well known than it should be, certainly far less well known than it deserves. And it doesn’t stand to reason why Wilson is not better known. His storefront museum is on the verge of spilling its contents into neighboring buildings, much has been written about his work including Lawrence Weschler’s New York Times bestseller Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, and most who come in contact with the museum can only rave about its vision. Yet most people, and even those in the art world, his peers, aren’t aware of it. One reason for Wilson’s less than well known status is that he plays it so straight. He treats his work and its role as myth making art with the utmost seriousness. He talks of the efforts of the Museum in the proverbial "We" when (without getting into the particulars and nuances of authorship and curatorship) he is the main originator of the work, and at times even the concepts on which they are built. When he presents a diorama of a floor dwelling stink ant from Cameroon—which when infected by a fungus ascends to the canopy only to be consumed and killed by the fungus, whereon it sprouts a one inch spore from its head (which one later finds to be mostly true)—alongside work of more questionable facts, he barely blinks an eye as to what is truth or fiction or hoax. There is not a guidebook for the work, or an artist statement to explain what is happening. For the most part Wilson leaves it up to the audience to find out what’s going on. And while arguably the power of the work comes from this unflinching stance, to someone who doesn’t know the whole story and doesn’t see the bigger picture of what Wilson is doing with his museum the full impact can be lost.

Needless to say that for many artists who work in this vein the relationship between creating the work truthfully and the work’s ultimate truth can be strained thin. The cycle can be vicious. And for individuals like Dave and Doug who do not practice within a well recognized artistic sphere the cycle is even harsher. Their audience is not expecting a twist in the road. Their audience wants to continue to believe. The cycle of creating work and then wanting to reveal its true source grows increasingly oppositional for Dave and Doug, especially when taking into account the old truism which politicians live by that disconfirmation can lead to strengthened belief. The better the hoaxer is at bringing faith to the spiritual-less, the stronger the belief grows, and if, at any point, an assertion of truth is attempted, the belief in the original, hoaxed explanations becomes that much more intense. A problem has been set up. If the success of an individual’s expression depends on the suppression of the individual’s presence, then how can they ultimately be given credit for their work and consequently the audience be given its true nature?

After coming forward Dave and Doug experienced this problem as seen in this quote by Carl Sagan, “Cerealogist [those who study crop circles] urged them [Dave and Doug] to go easy—after all, they were depriving many of the pleasure of imagining wondrous happenings...”. He finishes, “Aliens sell. Hoaxers are boring and in bad taste.”⁵ Such a statement is all too painful for a person whose artistic expression relies on the hoaxing of myth as an integral part of their making. There may not be an easy solution. If you let the audience in on the joke too soon the work disappears and dies, too late and they are jaded or likely not to believe you. All are hard to avoid. Perhaps the only compromise that can be had, and one that lets the act live on indefinitely, is the one that seems to have taken place between the circle-makers and the circle-believers, an abstract and opposing, constant dialogue. To throw doubt into the conversation and to present new challenges to overcome may be the only solace they can give each other. After all, in order for desire and faith to remain intact the whole point is to never get what you want.