Constructed Histories.

As part of the Crop Circle Kit project, Brandon Clifford with Mackenzie Muhonen and Taylor Boes curated ‘Constructed Histories’, a series of written and illustrated vignettes encouraging creative speculation and make-believe as part of the design process.

These visual and textual speculations open the door for interrogating a narrative-generated and narrative-generating architectural lineage. Existing crop circles and imagined future scenarios trace a legacy of reciprocity in land-marking and myth-making. Stories are invented from the forms of these colossal creations, while their forms are invented from stories.

Constructed Histories’ merges abstract narratives with concrete tools to design a play-as-learning lesson in geometry, history, and astronomy. It posits that storytelling — both written and visual — can provide learners of all ages with an education at the crossroads of imagination and reality.

These are those images and their stories.

The Story.

(2031 Earth Engraving) In 2031, an unexplained inscription was discovered in Utah’s Red Rock Country. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources encountered the massive and mysterious form while conducting a local survey. After the announcement, news outlets exploded with stories comparing the markings to the metal monolith that appeared in the same area a decade prior, in the fall of 2020.

This newly discovered crop circle was inundated with visitors. Photographs of it overwhelmed social media, and, similarly to the 2020 metal monolith, imitations began to surface. Crop circle copies, paying homage to the desert form, emerged across the globe.

(The Grassland Pillars) Photographs of a potential imitator surfaced on the other side of the world in the grasslands of Siberia. Initially thought to be by the same author of the Utah form, local research revealed that the Grassland Pillars site dates back to the early 19th century. Households across the area were said to have been visited by extraterrestrials, who spoke of a long-awaited miracle coming to their town; after the arrival of the Trans-Siberian Railway just a few years later, the visitors’ message was commemorated by three pillars. The monolithic forms are situated where the ships are said to have landed, surrounded by the last remnants of their original visit.

(The Comoros Archipelago) Shortly after, images of a curiously shaped archipelago in the Indian Ocean gained global attention. Amateur sleuths brought their discovery to Reddit’s r/CropCircles. The islands of this system had been well surveyed already; however, the newfound obsession with crop circles brought renewed attention to the curious atolls. Could it possibly be that this archipelago, too, was created with the same formula scholars had outlined?

The archipelago is uninhabited and now protected by national law as a natural park. Some have noted the strong similarities in the form of the archipelago with the Grassland Pillars and speculate that both were created by supernatural forces or extraterrestrial visitors.

(“Morning Snack”) Meanwhile on social media, smaller, homemade crop circles were also trending. These imitations became even more popular when scholars tried to decode the genetics of these crop circles, and agreed on a formula that represented the creation of these forms. (see recipe above)

 “Morning Snack” is a 2023 digital photograph triptych, each image measuring 3000 by 3000 pixels in RGB by an unknown source. The photograph depicts a selection of organic elements arranged in a form that references large geoglyphs. The composition was an ephemeral installation, designed during the social media trend of “crop circling,” where users created crop circles out of found objects using a published set of instructions.

Other crop circles continued to materialize, some new, others discovered and re-discovered amid the fervor, continuing to capture the public’s attention.

It was suddenly impossible to tell which crop circles were imitators and which were ages-old. Commentators saw them everywhere—in English gardens (see: The Hyde Park Incident), city plazas (see: The Athenian Circle), backyard swimming pools (see: Pool Party) and even on burnt pieces of toast. Myths of crop circles were studied to trace any decipherable link to the ones emerging across the globe.

New histories were being written for the forms whose histories had been lost. Facts were found to support these myths in the making: celestial alignments were cited, folklore called upon, geography noted, the ground carefully surveyed and recorded to accompany these suppositions.

The gargantuan geometries informed their own new histories: stories creating form creating stories.

 The media frenzy slowly died down. Headlines that had once celebrated crop circles and geoglyphs found the next big trend. Books and magazines were archived in library basements, and digital stories dissolved in the abyss of server warehouses. Time passed, and the constructions of this renaissance observed generations come and go. Just as their forebears once did, their physical presence lived on in obscure stories and references.

And then, one night, generations later, a young girl looked up at the moons and noticed something she hadn’t seen before. Scrutinizing the rings on an astrological body she had spent her life observing, she saw lines she couldn’t believe she had never noticed (The Future). A crop circle, could it be?

The next morning a new headline, a new mystery, a new myth.

What follows is a further selection of those celebrated circles and some of those that were overlooked.

These are the ‘Constructed Histories’

The Sertão Pattern:

The Sertão Pattern is a natural monument located in western Pernambuco, Brazil. The pattern is created from perennial rainfall and flooding followed by long periods of drought. Experts are still studying how the pattern is created so precisely, and why it has only appeared in one location and not across the region in similar microclimates. Local lore asserts that the pattern was created by extraterrestrials, and the area is treated as a sacred visitation site for the supernatural.

The Anonymous Shrine:

In the foothills of Mount Omine, the Anonymous Shrine was discovered in the 11th century and is a popular pilgrimage site for healing. The Shrine has been home to numerous miracles, and many believe that the stones possess curative properties. Folklore claims the Shrine was built by a kami who carved the boulders from the depths of its mountain home and planted magical seedlings around the stones to protect them. Modern visitors regard the Shrine as a holy site or celestial observatory, citing its unique astronomical alignments.

The Hyde Park Incident:

The Hyde Park Incident occurred on the morning of July 11, 2045, when 100-meter by 30-meter crop circle was discovered in the center of the park. The massive, mysterious installation was constructed from local grasses, gravel, and hedges, and appeared to be a permanent garden. Its presence baffled a stunned London and global audience, as officials struggled to explain its sudden appearance and the lack of witnesses at its creation. Many believed the work to be a protest act or publicity stunt, but no author ever came forward to claim responsibility. On the morning of July 13, 2045, the crop circle vanished, leaving no trace of its inexplicable presence. To this day, the creation and disappearance of the crop circle remains a mystery.

The Avalon Shallows:

The Avalon Shallows are a collection of geoglyphs created in the volcanic sea floor off the coast of Southern California. They are estimated to have been constructed between 400 BCE and 800 CE by Tongva abalone hunters, who carved incisions in the reef shallows to remove rocks, leaving the sea floor exposed. It is believed that the glyphs demarcated sacred oceanic hunting grounds, because they could be seen from the shoreline and adjacent cliffs. The Avalon Shallows were concealed by locals upon the arrival of the Spanish colonizers in the 16th century, and for generations passed down as myths of magical and protected sea pools. The oceanic geoglyphs were rediscovered by a group of hobbyist scuba divers in 2004 and have since been repaired. More sites in the Avalon Shallows chain continue to be discovered across the coastline making the Avalon Shallows the largest collection of contiguous aquatic geoglyphs, and leading to their designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Pool Party:

Located in the Los Angeles backyard of a celebrity who prefers to remain anonymous, the age of ‘Pool Party’ is difficult to determine. It was discovered when its owner threw a massive party, the noise of which overwhelmed the neighborhood and led to a multitude of noise complaints. When a police helicopter flew over the scene with spotlights to break up some of the thousands of partygoers, this image was captured. Although many have tried, none have been able to sneak onto the property since to experience this backyard geometry for themselves.

The Athenian Circle:

The Athenian Circle is a contemporary urban monument built in 2031 to honor the founding of the city. The masterpiece was designed to commemorate the sacred gathering area that existed on the site during Neolithic times, prior to the Mycenaean period. The form is said to have specific astronomical alignments that honor the city’s rich architectural history, although none can agree on the veracity of these critical nodes. It functions as a local gathering site and shaded plaza.

The Lunar Striations:

The Lunar Striations were first observed on February 6, 2073, at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii. Some scientists claim the Striations are a naturally occurring result of solar winds.  Others argue that the Striations are defined by the buildup of rocks along craters formed by frozen water on the Moon’s surface. Outside the scientific community, popular culture champions the Lunar Striations as proof of life beyond Earth. These groups believe that the Striations are an attempt by intelligent beings to make contact with humans, as they are a formal facsimile of existing monuments found across the globe.