Meet the artist behind Art Mechanix.
I'm Jammes Luckett, pronounced "Jom," and Art Mechanix is the independent creative studio I founded for myself in 1998. It's the sandbox where everything I do gets to be what it's always actually been to me: different creative expressions of the same problem-solving mindset. Every project I take on comes down to the same job. I'm always taking something apart, structuring it into some form of time or space, and putting it back together until it works. Years of experience with different industries has taught me that most things are connected in some way, whether they're commonly paired or use similar processes. So, I've never allowed labels, assumptions, limitations or constraints get in the way of finding solutions. I call that "crushing the boxes". It's the whole reason Art Mechanix exists.
I grew up in the Midwest, a Gen X latch key kid turning afterschool evenings into music, drawings, stories, and electronics. Everything permanently changed at the age of nine, when I got my hands on a Commodore 64 at a rummage sale and taught myself computer programming. My first multimedia projects sprang to life as a result of having a single device that saw all of my forms of storytelling the same way: ones and zeroes. It became a greater epiphany when I realized that there was not much difference in the way I approached creating multimedia projects from when I made individual works by traditional means. I continued to take things apart and reassembled them to understand how they worked, and I never stopped. My curiosity just found bigger laboratories to work, experiment, and grow in.
Art Mechanix started life as Go Little Records, the home for my own projects, including the alternative rock band Poperratic and the classic pop, rock, and soul-inspired Sister Transistor. Over time it grew into the umbrella for all the work I've done for clients, employers and collaborators from global brands to small businesses. My work has contributed to projects from MGM, FX Network, MTV, Lionsgate, Anheuser-Busch InBev, and many others. As you'll see in the Works section, I've done everything from making rock albums and film/TV soundtracks to creative and technical copywriting, voice overs, film and animation, to apps and websites. I've worked on feature films, television, advertising, and interactive media and with clients across many different industries.
Just as I don't see boundaries between disciplines, I don't see them within disciplines either. Within any given field, I've served in a wide variety of roles, from production to administrative, and worked across many different genres and styles.
No matter what role I've undertaken, I still use most of the same tools and techniques I did with that Commodore 64: creative thinking, timing, structure, and communication. That's also what tends to make me valuable to the people I work with. I've spent years building and seamlessly applying those skills and processes in a wide variety of contexts. I can onboard quickly on almost any kind of project and start finding solutions that move things forward. When I'm solving a problem, I'm usually weighing the same handful of things: speed, efficiency against budget, and ease of use, alongside the impact I want the work to have, and I lean on my knowledge of history, genre, and style whenever a project needs to be something genuinely its own.
While I'm naturally wired to create, and always will make things for myself, I've come to realize that much of the world right now isn't as hungry for original art as it once was. I believe that could change someday, but in the meantime, I enjoy living indoors and eating meals for sustenance, so I'm shifting more of my focus toward code-based work.
I've made key contributions to projects by these collaborators among others, across a variety of roles and workflow modes.
Whether building software or a website, I still tap into all of the same instincts I did with the first multimedia programs I made as a kid. Underneath all of it are the creative and technical tools I use in all of my other work. Timing, structures, colors, and communication all add up to a whole.
Music is emotional but, under the hood, it's driven by mathematical divisions of time and is a special language we all share. Together, it allows me to tell cinematic stories through sound and communicate more of the essence of what it means to be human.
The main difference between the arrangements, sequences, phrases, resolution, loops, and revision processes involved in my other work is that I simply happen to hear it instinctively before it's actually produced.
The visual sequences of film, video, and animation also revolve around structure, pacing, resolution, and story. Many of the same elements that make other work breathe are what brings these the marriage of image and sound to life. The same instincts become visible in motion, one frame at a time.
Design asks me to distill everything I know about rhythm, color, editing, and order into a single image or layout. We tell the eye where to land first, and where to go next.
It's an instinct that's as much about structure, pacing and revision as it is about what something looks like. I just happen to more often use design for things you look at rather than what you read, hear, or think through.
Whether writing songs, fiction, essays, creative or technical copy, the job is the same. I put words, sentences, ideas, into an order that makes them legible to someone else.
There is still color, tone, shape, pacing, and structure. Storytelling gives you the ability to take readers to a specific place and time, even invented ones and ones that are purely driven by emotion.
...from many interests and inspirations, new ideas take shape and more options are revealed to solve complex problems.
An idea rarely shows up finished, in any medium. It gets drafted, arranged, cut, revised, and rebuilt until it takes its final shape.
The main thing my work has in common, across all disciplines, is that there is problem-solving, there is world-building, and there is a process of creation, production, and revision.
Developing a concept is really just doing that work out in the open, before it has decided yet what final form it needs to take.
Art Mechanix Timeline
Music, Coding, and Curious Tinkering
A Gen X latchkey childhood spent at the intersection of music and early tech in the analogue-to-digital transition era. The creative groundwork for Art Mechanix began through hands-on experimentation: hours spent learning to write and record songs with DIY instruments, tinkering with musical toys, hacking consumer electronics, and programming multimedia projects on a Commodore 64. One of Luckett's artistic concept renderings was selected by the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) for display on buses throughout the area.
First Professional Work
Jammes was selected as an MC for a fundraiser in downtown Columbus, OH, sponsored by The Gap, attended by the city's movers and shakers. By the following year, she relocated to Los Angeles and, shortly thereafter, won a first-place cash prize for her promotional logo design for the Los Angeles Free Clinic.
Birth of Poperratic
Luckett begins Alien Tempo Experiment 13, which would later evolve into Poperratic. Over the next decade, releases dozens of DIY cassette albums, EPs and singles in the underground scene of Los Angeles and performs at iconic venues such as Whisky-a-Go-Go, The Coconut Teaszer, Dizzy Debby, Al's Bar, Mr. T's Bowl, The Room, Studio 56, and The Mint. Also selected to perform at the International Pop Overthrow music festival.
Coding in the Emerging Web
Begins self-teaching HTML, CSS, and basic JavaScript. Launches the earliest web platforms and foundational web presence for what would become Art Mechanix.
Commercial Studio Debut and Founding of GLR
In partnership with AJ Lambert's NYC-based Glimmerfed Records, records and releases the EP, "Live! From the Roller Derby!", co-produced by Lambert and Don Fleming (Sonic Youth, Hole, Shonen Knife). The EP received full rotation on influential KXLU Los Angeles. Establishes a DIY imprint, Go Little Records (GLR) and its companion zine called ATE Ball — a primary sandbox for early physical and digital asset distribution, independent production workflows, and multimedia experimentation.
First Pro Web and Software Dev Clients
Begins taking on clients for web and software development. Handcoded HTML multimedia websites along with scaling, troubleshooting, and maintaining complex enterprise content management systems (CMS), learning management systems (LMS), and eCommerce web environments for a diverse roster of clients, primarily independents and small businesses in arts, entertainment, and media. Platforms eventually span Moveable Type, Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Magento, and OpenCart. Around 2011, begins to specialize in WordPress as it becomes the industry standard.
Launching a Cult Classic
Serves as the composer and music supervisor for the feature film May (Lionsgate, 2003). Concurrently spearheaded the film's initial interactive web strategy and digital marketing assets before it was picked up for distribution, building the early online community around the film's tagline, "If you can't find a friend, make one." This directly helped position the film for a Sundance Film Festival selection, major studio distribution, critical acclaim, worldwide distribution, and cult status. The original materials and community concepts were officially adopted by Lionsgate for the film's commercial release.
GLR Becomes ARMX
Officially transitions Go Little Records operations under the Art Mechanix banner, uniting music composition, audio engineering, and interactive web production into a single cohesive creative studio.
The Woods
Serves as composer for the additional score and original songs for The Woods (MGM/UA/Sony). Also designs and deploys the pre-release web presence to drive direct audience awareness, with concepts and assets later integrated by the studio for the official theatrical rollout.
Blue Like You
Contributes original music production to Blue Like You (Microsoft / Safran Digital). Also created the short's poster distributed to attendees of San Diego Comic-Con and the project's gaming console assets. The production was the first episodic OTT streaming content delivered natively on the Xbox 360 platform.
First Film Recognition and Open Source Contribution
An animated music video for "Android In Love" selected by the Protoclip Festival International du Clip, a music video festival in Paris. Engineers and releases an open-source custom payment utility module bridging OpenCart functionality into the WordPress ecosystem.
Solutions Provider for macOS App
Utilizes the Cocoa-based MGTemplateEngine language to engineer custom, on-demand dynamic invoicing themes for users of Razor Ant Software's ProfitTrain Mac OS platform. Develops robust developer documentation to expand template features, extending core app functionality for power users through HTML, CSS, and PHP.
Indie Game Launch
Designs and programs The Current Wars, an interactive, collector-style 2D video game centered around Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe lab. Authors the game logic, performs multi-character voiceovers, structures the mechanical assets, and creates documentation.
Web Audio API Engineering
Explores the Web Audio API to build a variety of music/audio tools, including a browser-native, mouse-controlled digital theremin using custom JavaScript to map visual grid mouseovers directly to real-time audio pitch frequencies, and a low-frequency oscillator (LFO) with a custom GUI for real-time interactive control over signal modulation, wave properties, and audio output parameters in the browser.
Enterprise Infrastructure at Comcast dx
Contracted to join the internal dx (Data Science Customer Experience) product team at Comcast headquarters. Co-manages all technical aspects, code maintenance, and performance optimization for an internal knowledge base serving hundreds of corporate data scientists, software engineers, and analysts running global operations. Leads weekly virtual technical synchronizations with department administrators and subject matter experts, using SQL databases to isolate, interpret, and resolve data bottlenecks.
High-Volume Data Migration for ASM International
Contracted by ASM International (the world's largest materials science association) to assist a large-scale web migration project — structural modernization, new content creation, and optimization of a 30,000+ page enterprise website into a modern WordPress and Elementor ecosystem. Tracks, resolves, and escalates code bugs via an agile issue matrix, authors a comprehensive internal brand style guide, and leads live educational sessions to train staff on advanced layout components.
Recognition for Invitation and Zero Hero
Luckett receives international film festival selections, awards, and nominations for two film projects: the microshort "Invitation" was nominated for Best Mystery/Suspense Thriller from Toronto's AltFF Alternative Film Festival, and the animated music video for "Zero Hero" received selections and nods from multiple festivals and events including Newark International Film Festival, Metakansk, Art All Night Trenton, and London's Portobello Festival.
Expansion of Software Projects
Began expanding the next-gen software development toolset while integrating Art Mechanix's penchant for combining curiosity, empathy, and problem-solving. Three standouts using the latest technologies and strong design principles are Kontendor, World in Your Eyes, and Langanaut — being prepared for release and/or partnership.