Daniel is a part-time adjunct instructor at Lincoln Memorial University and a full-time artist currently living in Knoxville, TN. Raised in a Texas suburb by a family of engineers and programmers, he dabbled in coding at university but fell for printmaking soon thereafter. He utilizes visual imagery to investigate flawed design and broken logic. Daniel earned an MFA in printmaking from the University of Tennessee in 2014 and a BFA from Baylor University in Waco, TX. His exhibition record includes recent awards at the Kraków International Print Triennial and the Pacific States Biennial in Hawaii.

The made world reflects and directs our deepest needs. You are what you buy. In the rush to embrace the next big thing, we inadvertently become reliant on technologies that change our priorities and restructure our value systems. This happens slowly, by osmosis. Too often, we are unaware of what is happening until it’s too late.

My work critiques a misguided trust in the authority of technology. Implicit in free-market innovation is a barely discernable power structure. Who is engineering our problems? Once we have engaged with a new technology, we are already dependent on its function. Our perceived needs have been altered, and most likely monetized. In a world of superfluous technology, problems solve solutions.

The machines I create justify their own existence by creating a need and then resolving it. Fundamentally flawed design goals are inconsequential, because the logic is internally consistent. The visual iconography of schematics provides a convincing account of each machine’s functionality. It works on paper, and this is good enough for a culture that measures progress in units of technical innovation.