John Lundberg - Interview

You've studied not only fine art, but something called interactive design. What does "interactive
design" entail and how does it play into your art?
I brought my first dial-up modem in 1993, so I was a relatively early adopter of the Internet, and more
specifically the Web. The interactive design post grad I did was primarily focused on what was then an
emerging medium, the Internet and its possible creative use.

I think how those skills fed into my art practice on a literal level was the creation the circlemakers.org
website which was launched in 1995, as an unmediated way of communicating the ideas and philosophy that
feeds our artworks. Also at the same time, I was becoming interested in the idea of memes and how they can
spread like a mind virus through cultures, and the net was an ideal medium for helping that process along,
the net definitely helped propagate the crop circle meme far and wide and at speed. These days it's how
most people find us and our work, including yourself.

You've said that you abandoned the idea of exhibiting your artwork. Why?
It's simple, really. Unlike most other artists our work relies on the fact that the work we create needs to be
author-less to function properly. This is the polar opposite to how we usually think about art, we call works
by their author: it's a Warhol, a Dali, a Picasso. But for our work to function properly, we need to totally
remove ourselves from the equation. Crop circles gain their power from that gap in knowledge about their
author, as soon as you claim authorship of a crop circle you drain it of the very thing that gives it its power,
it's mystery and it just becomes a mere specimen, just flattened crop. So to try and transpose our work into a
gallery environment would be a complete anathema; it just would not work so it wasn't so much that we
abandoned the gallery ... it was more that the work we're creating could just not function correctly in a white
cube.

You received a great deal of attention for designing crop circles. In one interview, you state as a
motivation: "[It's about] being able to construct something that many people believe to be beyond
human endeavour." Is this still true?
Yes, absolutely. That really is at the core of what we do. In other words, it's the mythology, the folklore, and
the belief systems that are built up around our work that give it its power. Part and parcel of that is the
conceit that what people are looking at is beyond the terrestrial, the normal, and is situated firmly in the
realm of the paranormal where no human hand is at play.

What is the basic step-by-step process for making a crop circle?
Our tools are very unsophisticated. The two main tools we use are what we call a stalk stomper, which is a
4-foot plank of wood with a loop of rope attached to each end that is placed under one foot and used to
flatten the crop, as you walk forward with the board under foot in loping steps. The second tool is a
surveyor's tape, which is used for marking out all of the geometry of the formation. When we started
creating circles in the early 1990s, we used to create all of our diagrams on paper with a pen and compass,
but as you'll see the designs over the years have become increasingly more complex and larger in scale, so
nowadays all of the construction diagrams are created using the same kind of computer software an architect
would use to design a building.

So, essentially we take a series of diagrams out with us in the dead of night, sneak into a field full of cereal
crop and follow the instructions using the tape to mark out the basic geometry then using the stalk stopmers
to flatten the crop where necessary. There's a more detailed how to that your readers can find on our
website.

How did your first experiment in crop-circle design go?
Well, back in the early 1990s, the designs were much simpler. The first crop circle I created was a relatively
unspectacular affair, and because we were creating it in early May in Oil Seed Rape (Canola) the crop wasn't
entirely mature so it didn't lay down as well as we had hoped. But the design was spotted, and that summer
went on to make in excess of 50 crop circle formations, so it was a quick learning curve. By the end of the
crop circle season, we were creating some real jaw-droppers that attracted a lot of media attention, which
was very satisfying.

In 2008, what does it take to pull off a good hoax?
I think it's actually very difficult to pull off a successful hoax. But one area where I think there's scope to
create something successful is with the advances is technology. It's now possible for someone to create
convincing footage using digital effects that can be difficult to separate out from reality. Last year, Nicholas
Phelps did exactly that with two video clips he uploaded anonymously to YouTube depicting the overflight
of UFOs. Called "UFO Haiti" and "UFO Dominican Republic," the two clips generated quite a lot of
interest from UFO believers and skeptics.

I have a real soft spot for the alien autopsy film, which was created using a prosthetic dummy. I thought Ray
Santilli, who commissioned the fake footage, did an amazing job of myth making around the footage and its
alleged provenance with the U.S. military. To this day, Ray still maintains that he really did purchase the
footage from a retired military photographer who was tasked with documenting the autopsy. Although the
rather more mundane truth is that it was created for Ray Santilli by two great artists, Spyros Melaris and
John Humphreys.

Renowned artists Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell are artists who research the ways in which people
and architecture interact. How would you describe your experience working with them?
Ben and Nikki are great friends of mine. Although I've never really considered it before, I think there are a
couple of areas where our art practices overlap. Firstly, they are dedicated to creating perfectly-crafted, very
detailed architectural models, some of which are anamorphic distortions. It was these models that I helped
craft and there is a parallel in terms of the level of craft and detail to the crop circles I design. Also there's
the element of removing the human hand, some people when they view Ben and Nikki's work think the
models have been designed on a computer and fabricated by a machine.

Also on a conceptual level there is another link: Ben and Nikki are very interested in the power of buildings
and the effect they have on people. The crop circles we've created have been described as temporary
temples, and many visitors to the circles describe both physiological and psychological effects they've
experienced whilst visiting the circle. Although I think at heart the aims of our work are very different, but I
can see some overlap.

Has Circlemakers, your arts collective, taken on a life of its own now?
It almost feels like we've become part of the establishment here in the U.K. these days. As every summer
we'll venture out into the fields to create our artworks and the press will inevitably run articles about them
and about us. It's as if people and the culture in general need the circles, and whilst that need exists we feel
compelled to carry on creating ever more complex designs pushing the boundaries of what's humanly
possible.

Do you agree that deception "is part of creation and a necessary part of both science and art"?
For us as artists, absolutely!

You've had a large base of clients (BP, Red Bull, BBC, etc.) Did you ever expect to become the
go-to artist for commercial crop circles?
Not at all. We're an arts collective, we've never advertised or pitched for commercial work. Clients either
find us via our website or through previous commissions and ask us to work on some great projects. We've
been asked to work all over the world on anything from movies to TV shows, PR stunts to adverts and
music videos to environmental campaigns. I'm still amazed every time the phone rings. What's also great
about the commercial work is it feeds the crop circle meme back into popular culture, propagating it, and
nourishing it.

Naturally, the idea of crop circles conjure the idea of some alien craftwork. Creepily enough, there
is some really odd photographic evidence of UFO activity above your crops. Does this lend
credence to your work, or say something much larger? How do you feel about this?
We've always been very happy with the idea that our work might act as a catalyst for other seemingly
paranormal events. But of course, it's always possible that the UFOs seen over our crop circles could be
artifice created by another group of covert artists.

You are an avid proponent of ostensive definition -- something you consider "the legends we live"
and how folklore affects everyday life. Can you give us a good example of ostension, and why you
feel it's important to discuss as a social concept?
I think snuff movies are a great example of the mechanics of ostension. The term snuff entered popular
culture in 1971 in relation to the Manson Family. The writer Ed Sanders penned a sensational -- in the true
sense of the word - book called The Family: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion in which
he first used the term "snuff," referring to films that The Family allegedly shot during their murder sprees,
these films were never actually recovered, but since then death on film for sexual gratification -- even if the
films didn't actually exist - has always been referred to as snuff movies. So with Sanders book the snuff myth
was born.

Next we have to fast forward to 1976 to see what I feel is an amazing act of ostension, making the mythical
real. A movie producer names Allan Shackleton had brought the rights to a B-Movie called Slaughter which
was by any standards awful and he felt unreleasable in its original state. Shackelton had read Sanders' book
and decided to add a new final scene to the film which was shot as if the camera was still rolling after the
director has called "cut." In this alleged documentary scene, we see the lead actress attacked and ultimately
murdered on screen by the director. With the new ending in place, Shackelton began to seed the media with
reports of an alleged snuff movie that had been imported into the U.S. from South America. He then set up
a bogus organization called Citizens for Decency which campaigned against the release of the film. When it
opened in 1976, theaters were besieged by protestors, some real, some seeded by Shackelton ... and for
many of those viewing the film, the snuff myth was finally made flesh.

How does ostension play into art?
For us it underpins everything we do. We are ostensive artists -- we use artifice to create belief systems for
other people to inhabit.

How does one (apparently) move effortlessly between making crop circles and making
award-winning films, such as The Mythologist?
My films are just an extension of my art practice. The Mythologist was a lyrical documentary about a latter-day
Walter Mitty character and the power of myth. It poses the question to the viewer: when enough people
believe a myth does it become a reality?

The Mythologist is about "counter-espionage, disinformation, subterfuge, spooks, spies, lies and
the keeping and revealing of secret knowledge." Are you drawn to espionage and spy thrillers for
good storytelling?
My interest in espionage stems from the overlap in the methods I use as an artist and the methods employed
by the intelligence services to achieve their goals. Deception and artifice are the bread and butter of
intelligence. Psychological warfare and disinformation are both subjects that have a lot in common with my
art practice.

What can you tell us about your first feature-length documentary, Mirage Men?
Mirage Men focuses on a little known part of the US military intelligence network called OSI, the Office of
Special Investigation run by the U.S. Air Force and a series of disinformation campaigns they ran in the late
1980s and early 1990s. More than that, I don't want to say at the moment. But the film will be released in
2009 along with an accompanying book penned by my collaborator Mark Pilkington.

See more about John Lundberg and his work here.