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Q: What's your purpose? RS: Well, it's hard to say what one's purpose is. It grew out of a whole preoccupation of things. It's a culmination of a lot of ideas that I've been working out. It would be a whole long story. It's a little too broad a question, I think. Q: [What part of the Lake is it in?] RS: It's in the northern part of the Lake, and there's no, nothing lives except brine shrimp and the algae in the Lake. There's no boating on the Lake because it corrodes everything that it touches. There's a few salt mines around the northern part, and going right across the Lake is the Lucien Cutoff, which is the transcontinental railroad. The Lake is completely useless in terms of anything. There is a natural tar outflow right near my place, and I did try to get crude oil out of this sort of Rancho La Brea tar pit that was there that failed. [Inaudible question from audience] RS: 30 thousand? Oh, I don't know, it's hard for me, I never try to... [Inaudible question from audience about flying over the piece in a jet airplane] RS: You go too fast, it's a little too quick. Even when you're down, in a regular airplane, it's hard to maintain a steady position. You're constantly whipping over it very quickly. I can't conceive of seeing anything from the altitudes that the jets fly with. Q: Was it hard to get permission to [use/acquire the land?] RS: Not really, because they were just amazed that anybody would even want to bother with it, at least the land from the state of Utah. The Lake itself is owned by the federal government, and then the main land is private. The area where I worked is state land and that's called the Meander Zone. I have a lease on it. Q: Could you elaborate a little bit on the spiral as a configuration? RS: Yes, well there's one way of thinking about it: As a concept it's kind of a resolution of dialectical thinking. In other words to me it's not a matter of picking one side or the other. It's sort of brings everything into a whole, kind of whirling situation, rather than a side-taking situation. In other words it's seeing things from many different angles. It's not a Positivist view or a need to find an object. It's more involved, kind of layers of reference. It's kind of a generator that just refers to countless spirals. It's a very primitive form; in fact the Indians in South America used it in these large line drawings around Peru. It also exists in the Indian, on the tail of the Serpent Mound in southern Ohio. All throughout the world you find it. Actually in terms of earthworks, there's something like an estimated 100,000, like a fantastic amount of earthworks in the United 3
