Minneapolis-born digital artist jrdsctt is a MakersPlace OG and a staple of the community with over 250 unique collectors on MakersPlace. With his Genesis Drop, jrdsctt invites a new element into his creative process: artificial intelligence.
jrdsctt joined MakersPlace as an artist in early 2019. He later became their first official ambassador, helping run the MakersPlace Discord server alongside staff. This role eventually transitioned into an official job with the company in May of 2021.
He has been working there ever since, helping build the MakersPlace community during the day, and glitching dystopian worlds in the evening. The web3 space has consumed most of his waking hours (and some of his unconscious hours as well).
We caught up with jrd ahead of his latest exhibition, MOONN O))) to learn more about this recent project, his AI-induced ennui, and the influence of drone metal and Mark Rothko.
We have other interviews with jrdsctt, including this podcast episode about his series Sacred & Terrible Air and this one covering his background in glitch.
Watch or Listen to the Unedited, Far Nerdier Interview
BW: In the last year and a half, your work shifted significantly with the advent of AI, which was a boon to glitch artists looking for base material. Can you tell me about what you worked on during that AI-heavy period? I wouldn’t say you’ve completely left it behind, but there’s a pause on your AI output.
JS: When the recent AI boom started, it opened up new possibilities for me and many artists. As a kid, I wanted to be a cartoonist but quickly realized I couldn’t draw.
AI suddenly gave me access to mediums I never thought I’d touch. I’m happy with where I ended up—photography, editing, and glitch art—but now I could collaborate with AI to create in styles I never imagined, like paintings or 3D models.
At first, AI was just another step in my glitch process. I used to grab photos from stock sites and apply glitch techniques. With AI, I could generate images like caves in MidJourney and glitch them. That was my mode for a while, but then I wanted to push further—what else could I do?
Other artists were doing pure AI work, but I always added my personal touch—coloring, textures, or blending outputs.
Jellyfoods was my first pure AI project—a collection of jellyfish combined with foods. Another project, Sacred and Terrible Air, inspired by Disco Elysium, was my attempt at something extremely painterly.
I noticed AI became a crutch—almost too much of a good thing. I didn’t like relying on it. I’m not done with AI, but recently, I’ve been more interested in returning to my roots—what got me into digital art in the first place. So, I’ve stepped away from it for now.
BW: I came across a quote recently—I don’t remember who said it, but it predated AI by quite a ways. It basically said, the ways you make your job more efficient will be the things that make you hate your job more.
JS: Yeah. It makes me think of one of my favorite authors, Vonnegut, and his first book, Player Piano. The whole point of that book is about an age where automation and robots are so advanced that they either have to make up fake jobs for people just to give them something to do, or you’re a super-smart scientist who keeps the machines running. But even they become obsolete at some point.
It comes down to—maybe this is just capitalism drilled into my head—but is paradise really having nothing to do? That sounds boring at some point, like when something else is doing all your work for you. I don’t know. I feel really conflicted about it, and I’m sure a lot of people do. To your point, I’m really curious where we’re going to be in five years, or even a year from now.
BW: This series in particular, MOONN O))) — outside of the frustration of feeling unfulfilled in the process of creating, where did this series come from? How did you choose what the base imagery was going to be? Did you know what you wanted to do and just went and did it, or was it one of those intuitive, feel-your-way-into-it processes?
JS: It was kind of a bit of both. It really just started with wanting to bring the practice of making art back into my daily life. Back when I was really grinding and trying to make something of myself, I set aside time every day to work on art. Lately, I found myself not doing that. So, at first, it came from wanting to bring that practice back because I’d stalled out recently.
I also wanted to move past AI or not have it involved, so I thought, “Let’s go back to my old practice.” I logged into Unsplash for the first time in two years and started perusing. Someone had uploaded this photo of some mountains with a big moon in the middle of it, and I thought, “That looks a lot like the new album art for the new Tycho album that’s about to come out.” Tycho is one of my all-time favorite musicians. Scott Hansen is the mastermind behind it, and he’s also an amazing graphic designer. He was known as a graphic designer long before he started making music. He used to have this great taste-maker blog back in the day called ISO50, where he would share his art, other art, and design.
I saw this piece and thought, “That looks like a Tycho album cover.” I decided to see what I could do with it. I downloaded the photo, played around with it, glitched it, and messed with the composition. That became MOONN O))) I in the series—the very first one I made. At that time, I didn’t know it was going to be a series, but I liked how that piece turned out. So I started going into Photoshop and tried making more compositions like that.
It’s such a simple, recognizable form—jagged lines at the bottom and a circle in the middle. Because humans are so good at reading patterns and finding meaning where it doesn’t always exist, it’s easily recognizable as some sort of celestial body in the sky with mountains. It’s very similar to the landscape I find myself in here in Utah, with mountains everywhere and the moon visible.
I decided to make more because, for me, once you make one, if you like it, you need to make more to show it to the world. That’s something I think came from my undergrad, especially in the photography courses I took. Everything had to be structured within a series—never just one-off pieces. So I started making more, and as with most of my projects, it felt like reading tea leaves. A lot of my work is inspired by taste-makers and media that enters my life. I started to find other things inspiring it, like Sunn O))), Tycho, and Radiohead, who I was listening to a bunch at the time. It all culminated into this 10-piece series that we have now.
BW: We should probably talk a little bit about Sunn O))). Why did you name this piece after a drone metal band?
JS: I got into Sunn O))) when I was in college. It was such an interesting and different genre of music to me. Drone metal was something I had never touched before. You’ll notice from a lot of the titles of my pieces, I love playing with text and typography. Even before I heard them, just seeing that band name hooked me.
Looking into them more, the whole conception of that band feels so aligned with my creative process. They’re these two guys who are now like the godfathers of drone metal. They created Southern Lord Records, the drone metal record label. They were inspired by another legendary drone metal band called Earth. Their idea was, “Hey, we should make a band like Earth.” So, they called themselves Sun, a direct play on that.
Not only that, but they used amplifiers with the brand name Sun and the little O))) symbol, so they named themselves after that. Their whole conception and creation are based on being inspired by this band and the amplifiers they liked. Most of my art and projects are born from similar inspirations. So, it felt like a no-brainer to name this series after them. I’m making a series with celestial bodies, I love the band Sunn O))), and they have this origin story. It felt like the universe was telling me, “This is the name of your project.” It just had to be.
Specifically, in 2009, they released an album called Monoliths & Dimensions. It was one of the first albums they did with a vocalist. They got the current lead singer of Mayhem to do these spoken-word tracks. For anyone unfamiliar with drone metal, it’s usually a 10 to 20-minute-long song with just one bass note playing the whole time. They got this Swedish black metal vocalist to speak over it, and he wrote beautiful poetry about monoliths and dimensions, celestial bodies, and black holes—kind of Lovecraftian, cosmic horror-esque themes about beings beyond our comprehension.
The lyrics and poems really matched the vibe and mood of the pictures I was making. It all coalesced together. By the time I finished making the pieces, the one song had the perfect amount of lines where each line could be associated with a single piece. It just felt like it all fit together perfectly. So, that’s how this weird drone metal band became the main inspiration for the project. It’s cool.
BW: When things fall together like that, it just feels like it was meant to be. That sets me up for a great transition, because I just finished thinking about and writing about one of your pieces, Untitled 09 (Monoliths on a Planetary Rotation) from the jrdko series, which may have been inspired by exactly what we’re talking about. Can you tell me about the jrdko series?
JS: So, the jrdko series—my partner and I traveled to Paris for the NFT Paris event this past year. While we were there, there happened to be a Mark Rothko exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. It was an amazing retrospective of his entire career. If anyone hasn’t been to that museum, it’s split up into 12 different galleries, and I think 10 of the 12 galleries were dedicated to him. Each room focused on a different era of his work.
I had Rothko on the brain—I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I caught myself looking up articles and reading about him. I’d always been a fan of his work, and I started looking up some of his quotes and thoughts on art and creation. He said some really cool stuff—it was intense. He had so much intentionality and meaning behind what, to some people, might just look like two color squares on a canvas that their kid could do.
But where I live, I’m not set up to have giant 30-foot canvases stretched on the floor that I can paint. So, I thought, “This AI thing lets me experiment with art that I normally can’t do. What if I tried to make Rothko-like pieces, but in my style?”
I started experimenting with Midjourney, not to make Rothko pieces, but to make Rothko-inspired pieces. I then took those into Photoshop and meticulously played around with layering various gradient maps and texture maps to create the output you see.
One of my favorite parts of all those pieces was coming up with the titles. I looked to Rothko, who often titled his works “Untitled” followed by a reference to the color. I tried to take that approach but put my own spin on it. I’m someone who can always see shapes in clouds and faces in places—I’m sure a lot of people can—so I challenged myself to come up with what I saw in them. I loved how absurd some of the titles ended up being. Some were more serious, like the one you mentioned, and others were more playful, like Snow Cone Syrup on Ketchup and Mustard.
That’s how the series came to be. And actually, for everyone listening, Brady is the official first owner of one of the pieces from that series—the first one I made, Moss and Snow on Lichen.
BW: What is the role of story in your work?
JS: I think there’s always a story, but I usually don’t figure out what it is until after the fact. There are projects where I start with an idea or narrative I want to communicate—like with the jrdko series, which really came from a need to express myself like Rothko did. But many times, I’m also learning about the story afterward, letting my subconscious stew on it. Sometimes, I let the art tell me what the story is, rather than conveying a story that’s in my head visually.
BW: What kind of work would you have made if you were born 100 years earlier?
JS: Oh, boy. In that scenario, I probably would have given up—okay, I take that back. There’s something in me that’s terrified people won’t know I was here after I die, so I have this need to leave my mark on something.
I’ve tried so many things over the years. One thing I thought I was decent at was poetry. Dramatic writing, long stories, novels, or plays—I don’t think my brain is built for that. But short bursts of emotional expression, like poetry, might have been my thing. I’m no master of language, but like with the jrdko titles, I think I have a knack for using language in non-traditional ways that create interesting juxtapositions. So, 100 years ago, I probably would have focused on poetry, realizing I’m not built for long-form writing.
BW: What is your advice to a young artist?
JS: With the advent of AI, there’s never been more competition to make a name for yourself. First of all, if your only goal is to become a big, famous artist, you’ve probably already failed. Fame is great, but it shouldn’t be the end goal—your art will come across as hollow if that’s your only focus.
You need to find a reason to create. I’ll borrow advice from Dan Harmon, the writer behind Rick and Morty and Community. When people ask him for advice on getting into writing, he says it’s easy to convince yourself you’re bad at it, so prove it—write something bad. Just do something. Prove to yourself that you’re bad, and then try to top it. Keep challenging yourself to create.
That’s why, as I’ve said before, doing a daily challenge helped me build habits around creation. If you’re making 100 pieces over 100 days, one of them is bound to be good. Then you can explore what makes that one good and the others bad, and go from there. So really, the advice is to force yourself to start making stuff. It might not be instant, but going through that practice, sharing it online, and building a community will bring good things. You just have to be in it for the long haul.
BW: What achievement of yours are you especially proud of?
JS: It’s hard not to say the Sotheby’s auction. Being an artist in this space, trying to make sales, being able to say that a piece of mine was showcased and sold in an official Sotheby’s Metaverse lot is pretty cool and wild. Honestly, it’s something I never thought I’d be able to say.
A lot of little dominoes fell into place to make that happen, so I don’t want to be like, “Oh yeah, my art prowess landed me this.” I realize it was a very unique case, but I’m extremely grateful. It’s really cool to be able to say I’m an artist who sold at Sotheby’s. It still doesn’t feel real to me
BW: What creative ambitions do you have that might surprise your community or collectors?
JS: That’s a great question. As you know, I’m a huge music fan. A lot of my art is inspired by music, but I’m not a musician. I can somewhat carry a tune, but I wouldn’t call myself a singer. I’d love to try making music again someday, though maybe that’s not so surprising. It feels like such a far-off thing that I’d love to return to one day.
BW: That connects to my next question: What is your great unrealized project?
JS: My great unrealized project would likely be something multi-dimensional, like an experience similar to what Sam Spratt or sgt_slaughtermelon creates. I want to create something that forces the user to go through an experience—beyond just looking at a picture or watching a movie.
Growing up in the ’90s, I loved Goosebumps choose-your-own-adventure books. In undergrad, I took web-based art classes where we made click-and-point, choose-your-own-adventure-type art. The technology was new, but it felt clunky. Now, we’re getting to a point where it feels more natural.
For example, sgt_slaughtermelon previewed his “I’m Not Good at Computer” project for me. It feels like a natural progression from “Do You Want to Feel Something?” I loved that project, but it lacked immersion for me. His end goal is an actual operating system that’s also a conceptual art project. “I’m Not Good at Computer” is a step toward that.
I want to create an experience that takes time. Today, art is so fleeting. We scroll through Instagram, bombarded with images. I want to create something that stops people, makes them slow down, and take it in over time. That’s my end goal, but I have no idea what it would look like or how to begin. But that’s what I want to do.
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