Glitch Artist Attempts to Synthesize Brains with Wavy Alien Landscapes

A colorful mountain spikes into peaks and down into troughs within an endless black void. Over a flickering urban landscape, a swelling wave launches over a grid of skyscrapers and yellow-flecked asphalt. Glitch artist Jeremy Nealis, a.k.a., Aertime, incorporates his knowledge of internet culture and the digital-based music scene into his artwork. His pieces play with dimension and space via a pixel-sorting process that gives each one an individually melty look.

"I think I first got my hands on some decent software when I was 12 or 13 years old," the artist tells Creators. "I used to make a lot of wallpapers for my favorite bands and share them online. So much of our life is experience through some kind of digital medium these days—it's hard not to be influenced by it."

When creating each of his multifaceted 'glitch' artworks, the artist uses high-tech tools. "As far as process goes, I'm always trying to do something a little different. I can get a lot of interesting texture and depth if I modify an image by pixel-sorting it, and using that modified image as a displacement map for a plane in 3D space. I can create all sorts of psychedelic mountainscapes and alien worlds with this technique."

An avid music fan, the artist is not immune to the influence of his community within Madison, Wisconsin. Aertime says he often sees it "creeping up in my art, but also in the music I make with my band, Double Ewes."

"When I turned 18, I decided I was going to stay put. Having been here for nearly 13 years, Madison, Wisconsin is home. Madison is often described as this little liberal island surrounded by farms and blue collar towns," he shares. "There's a lot going on with local arts and music, and although a lot of my creative friends have moved out to other states to seek out places that they feel harbor more arts and culture, there's still a really big sense of community and pride among the scene here. I think that rural-urban mentality definitely influences a lot of artists in this state."

To see more work by Aertime, visit his website and Instagram page.

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