ex_mortal is a glitch artist based in Florida who builds video and audio works from vintage, modified analog hardware alongside digital tools, treating circuit-bent electronics, VHS equipment and modular synthesizers as instruments for image-making. Working from a studio, they glitch VHS footage, drawings and 3D models to evoke natural landscapes disrupted by signal interference, having started out performing live analog glitch sets in Florida clubs.
They began glitching digitally in 2013, layering glitched images and video to music using just a tablet and phone, before discovering analog glitch art through online communities including Glitch Artists Collective, Video Circuits and the Tachyons+ group. In 2016 they bought their first analog glitch device, a Vortex Decoder, and around the same time began performing live with modular synthesizers, eventually bringing televisions and cameras into clubs to glitch footage in real time. They entered the crypto art space in 2021 through Hic et Nunc, a decision they credit to the artist Sky Goodman. The pseudonym came from a conversation with an artist friend who predicted crypto art would come to mirror the traditional art world, where the best artists often go unrecognized until after their deaths. ex_mortal chose a name that, in their own words, meant “I'm already dead”.
