Farley Mount, Hants 2019 L (20 x 30 Photo Print)

Description

About our Photographic Enlargements: Each 20 x 30 inch image is printed on glossy photographic paper and is supplied hand-rolled and posted in a strong cardboard tube or is flat-packed to ensure safe delivery. We have chosen a selection of our favourite crop circles from the 2019 season for you to choose from.

History & Connections: There have been circles before at Farley Mount one in 1990 and another in 2002.

Design & Symbolism: This design is undoubtedly made from the intersection circles and rings, which create an interference-type pattern. Looking at this circle made me immediately think of the famous ‘double-slit’ experiment in quantum mechanics where photons are fired at a barrier with two  vertical slits. Traditional Newtonian Physics would dictate that the photon would travel through either one of the two slits before hitting a second, solid barrier. Logic then dictates that the photons would make two vertical lines on the back barrier  – one line for those photons going through the left slit and another for those going through the right. Right? No. Not always.

When the experiment is being recorded or measured this is indeed what does happen. However, when the experiment is left to run and no one is measuring or recording the photons do something amazing; each photon goes through both slits at the same time. This creates a classic interference pattern on the barrier. This strange ability to be two places at once is one of the central tenets of quantum physics and what makes the whole quantum world very strange.

What seems to be suggested by this experiment is that consciousness plays a part in how reality unfolds. And although we know it happens, and we put this to practical use in modern technology (including in your mobile/cell phone), we really don’t yet, still understand exactly why. Physicists use what is called the ‘uncertainty principle’ to describe this behaviour, which basically says that in this instance, it is not possible to accurately calculate what any particle may or may not do; it is for some, however, an unsatisfactory solution. Many physicists do not like the idea of consciousness playing a role in the ‘objective’ world, but physicists are not the only people who get to legitimately describe and define reality. Certainly, in other academic disciplines this idea is not so much of an anathema and is discussed and debated widely.

I have often wondered about the symbolism of interference patterns as crop circles; made as they are with no-one watching and recording them as they are made in secret, in the dark, at night. Just like the double slit experiment, they seem to be showing us something about consciousness and its role in the unfolding of reality.

You can read more about this circle here.