Sterling Crispin Toys With Singularity

Sterling Crispin’s fan-made music video for “Moses” by Chelsea Wolfe.

Sterling Crispin is a sort of efficient riddle wrapped in an enigma, a product of our inscrutable contemporary cyber-web environment. Besides his uncanny alias and the fact that he was born in Hawaii, this prolific artist—who could very well be a bot for all we know, or a fictitious pseudonym for a collective of merry internet pranksters—displays a troubling yet interesting palate for tech-esoterism and theoretical concepts related to the notion of “singularity,” which, bear in mind, will either emancipate or destroy us. The info section on his website mentions a variety of concepts and keywords that portray a rather playful paranoid take on our postmodern condition.

His physical work is as troubling and complex as this manifesto, but more direct. Crispin uses all the formats of digital creation (mainly installation, videos, GIFs and hybrid formats) to create short pieces of art with simple images edited in loops or in mischievous setups. His videos, found on his Vimeo page, all attest to a certain sincere and “idiotic” vision of the contemporary art world that would never fall into the black hole of ironic parody. Yet the man is no goofball, and he also has directed a small bunch of music videos for his fellow musician friends, like this new video for his mates Modern Witch.

We made a selection of our favorite pieces, which also might be the most off-putting:

Music video for Modern Witch: “Desire”

BSOD On Holiday

Music video for Pictureplane: “Real is a Feeling”

Progress: exhibited at Eyebeam as part of Blip Festival 2011

Music video for Blissed Out: “Myrtle Wyckoff”

[Via ilikethisarti]