Center pivot irrigation technology was developed by a Nebraska farmer in 1948 as an alternative to groundwater irrigation methods that could not support many American farms due to the dusty bowl of the 1930s. These new elevated pipes diverged from the center of the fields to 133 acres, making it unnecessary to lay and then remove the pipes from the ground.

This new technology proved to be useful, but it also provided additional aesthetic benefits: it created crisp circles within squares that when viewed from above. The circles are the result of the inability of pipes to reach the most remote acres of fields; they skip edges and corners as they rotate.

Architect Ronald Rael, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, launched an Instagram account highlighting these irrigated circles. The images in the account span both the globe and the color wheel, often recalling artist Piet Mondrian, who worked with circles rather than squares.

Rael, who grew up in Colorado, says he was “pretty much surrounded by center-pivot sprinklers,” so much so that he could pull over to the side of the road and count on a free car wash. He recalls seeing them from above on his first flight as a teenager and was amazed at how they looked when he was no longer standing next to them. Rael returned to his long-standing interest in sprinklers and decided these images were worth sharing.

Among his favorites from the 90s he posted (at the time of posting), Rael counts fields in Settat, Morocco, which appear to be grid-aligned - as if the turning system had been abandoned and scarred after a longer period the traditional irrigation system has been restored. He also highlights the fields in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, which stand out for "a stark contrast between desert and life." In other words, those he finds “most interesting are where more than one system intersects,” be it irrigation systems or landscape characteristics.

While these farmers may not think of themselves as artists per se, Rael believes that “farmers inherently understand the beauty of their work. These pivot systems in their own way demonstrate the diversity of life on Earth: they range from "impressionistic" and "surreal" to "modern" and "technological", as Rael sees them. Ultimately, this is what he likes best about these slewing systems. “I fly” on Google Maps and Apple Maps, he says, unsure when he will land on the next field he shows. This is more than a substitute for travel during quarantine; it is a reminder that many of the things we are most familiar with are more than they seem.