Viceland Exclusive: Surface To Air's Hello Kitty Crop Circle

Photo by Derrick Santini © Sanrio 74-2004

Sanrio commissioned Surface to Air (New York) to make an artwork celebrating Hello Kitty’s 30th birthday for an exhibition at the Mori Museum in Tokyo. The three members of Surface to Air who designed and oversaw the crop circle were myself, Rajan Mehta and Daniel Jackson. We made the piece on a farm just outside of Stonehenge (which is the ‘unofficial home of crop circles' and just a spooky place in general) this past July. After over a month of planning, it took 16 hours of physical labor to make. We rented the land from the farmer for 2 months. It’s approximately half a football field by half a football field in size. It could only be viewed from the air — which was not a problem since every flight heading south from Heathrow went directly over it. Our goal was to make something that would add to the mystique of Hello Kitty's origins, and at the same time work within the grandiosity of the Hello Kitty phenomenon (if you will). A crop circle — being of similar disposition — seemed to be a perfect fit. Besides, we just thought it would be fucking ridiculous and they gave us the money to do it! They even ran tours from Japan for people to go see it.