Nomad Error Logs #2

Artist Spotlight: jrdsctt

“Where there is no imagination, there is no horror” - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, saw that much of the horror the reader of his books experienced was made up in the readers’ own imaginations rather than caused by the specific words on the page. The reader conjuring up their own horrifying thoughts elicited by the mysteries in the book; the implied unknown. Like a child in a dark bedroom kept awake by a rapping at the window, their imagination filled with the frightening monsters trying to break in rather than the more mundane alternative of a tree branch being blown into the glass by the wind.

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Much of Conan Doyle’s theory can also be said of visual art, some of the more effective pieces are those that allow the audience to fill in the gaps themselves. The hallmark of a brilliant artist is one who recognizes this and creates a piece that grants the space to allow the audience to project their own imaginations onto the work. This is especially true for art that deals with darker themes.

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One person who understands this brilliantly is the US based artist, designer and curator, jrdsctt. He was one of the first artists that I followed when I first started on this artistic journey, and his contributions to glitch art as well as its community cannot be overstated.

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Any fan of glitch art who has spent Halloween haunting around Instagram will be familiar with the annual event of Glitchtober. A glitchy riff on the popular Inktober trend where artists create their takes on each day's theme. Created by jrdsctt in 2020, it has been a wonderful opportunity for artists to push their creative boundaries and find new audiences. As its original creator, along with all his curatorial work for Glitch Artists Collective, a lot of artists have jrdsctt to thank for helping to get eyeballs on their work and on glitch art in general (both figuratively and quite literally in some cases - my very first Glitchtober work was for the Day 1 2022 prompt, Eyes).

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Even though he regularly experiments with many different subjects and styles, you can always tell at first glance a new a jrdsctt piece just dropped when scrolling through your social media feed. One thing I really like is that he’s a master of the leitmotif. Like in Nine Inch Nails’ The Fragile with its repeated piano melodies throughout multiple songs, jrdsctt is the king of having these subtle, recurring themes that permeate his work, bringing about a consistent and iconic voice. Whether it’s the themes of decay (the pixelsorting, the skulls, rotten fruit), suffering (the shrieking, contorted faces) or vulnerability (hands reaching out to be saved as they fall through the void), it all leads to a consistent body of work.

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He’s able to keep these recurring themes while still creating fresh works. Just in in the last year or so alone his creative output spanned from animated flaming skulls built from cityscapes, to dystopian poster designs, making a diversion to make some pixel ghouls, then closing out the year with Rothko inspired glitch abstracts. All of these series unique from each other and fleshed out with multiple diverse works, but not overstaying their welcome and leaving you wanting more.

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So I’d like to share a couple of his works that I really like. Just to note that these interpretations are my own and may not necessarily reflect jrdsctt’s original intent. But the beauty of his works is that he, like Conan Doyle, gives us enough space to allow us to project our own ideas onto the art.

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The first work is a piece called ɉɍđsȼŧŧŧɏᵽƀŧ_008 (aka 'YELLA'). The jrdsctttypbt series features a series of posters of (mostly) glitched skulls and text in an unknown language set to vibrant colour schemes reminiscent of different kinds of familiar poster designs (old rave posters, Shepard Fairey’s ‘Hope’ poster, old Showa-era Japanese advertising). These posters seemingly belonging to another world or dimension. The people on the posters decaying as their civilization and culture died out, and the society frozen in some kind of purgatory or hell. The thing I love about this series is it allows us to create a whole world rich with backstory and lore as to who these people were, why did they die out and what are these posters advertising.

I think why this one in particular resonates with me is because it very much reminds me of the neon posters and fliers I used to see as child around the city advertising Acid House raves, a long forgotten relic of the 80s and 90s. It taps into a nostalgia and sadness for a subculture no longer around, much like the fictional subjects of jrdsctt’s dystopian universe (not to mention Shepard Fairey’s hope and Showa era-Japan).