284 Taché Hall
University of Manitoba
(Fort Garry Campus)
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2M6
Education
- North Carolina State University (NCSU). Master of Fine Art (M.F.A.).
- Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. BFA, Communication Design, Honours.
Education, non-credit
- Summer Institute for Literacy in Indigenous Content. University of Manitoba, Indigenous Studies. 2021.
- BIPOC Design History. Black Design in America: African Americans and the African Diaspora in Graphic Design. 2021.
- Modernity + Coloniality. Independently organized by Dr. Ahmed Ansari. 2020.
Creative work & Research
Daniel McCafferty has a rich background in underground punk and DIY music scenes which have informed his practice and pedagogy. His creative research uses analogue and digital mediums, including print, programming, mapping, projection, photography and video to explore how convention and designed systems articulate forms of authority.
Much of his practice centres on collaboration as a purposeful counter-model to labour relations under capitalism. He is a co-founder of Public Design Unit (PDU) with Patricio Davila (Toronto). PDU creates large-scale, layered visualizations of data collected through public workshops, ethnographies, community consultation, open-source programming, mapping and 3d software. Drawing from critical cartography, the visualizations document community knowledge, ambitions, desires and patterns of injustice. He co-founded Different Data (DD) with Rachele Riley (Greensboro) and Joshua Singer (San Francisco). DD locates, manipulates and displays data that reveal overlooked or silent narratives, questioning what constitutes legitimate and illegitimate forms of data, knowledge and experience. Projects from these collectives have been exhibited internationally at Toronto’s Nuit Blanche Festival, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland and in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2021, he presented new collaborative research with Ali Qadeer (Toronto) at Keep it Simple Make it Fast (Porto, PT) and at Emily Carr University (Vancouver, BC).
During his one-year residency as a Media Artist in Residence at VideoPool, Daniel developed new code-based generative projects using Processing. if++then==true—a generative audio and video projection—exhibited at Poolside Gallery. For the Gornisht Risograph Zine Residency he wrote a program in Python to scrape the web for data on bottled water products sold on Amazon.com. This data was used in a set of zine spreads designed and printed for the PlugIn’s Prairie Art Book Fair.
Other notable achievements and contributions
Daniel proposed and was funded to develop the School of Art’s year-long Indigenous Designer In Residence program (2017–2018). In 2019 he was awarded the University of Manitoba’s prestigious Falconer Emerging Researcher Award for Outstanding Contributions to Scholarship and Research. In 2022 he was the runner-up in the Registered Graphic Designers of Canada’s Design Educator Award.
Graduate students
Daniel has advised and served on MFA committees for candidates from a diverse range of artistic practices at the School of Art and in other Departments (Architecture, Computer Science). He is especially interested in working with Graduate students whose work is interdisciplinary and underpinned by critical and theoretical perspectives on art, design, media and technology. Graduate students from any discipline should get in touch if you have interests in digital technologies, design, print, books, zines, diy methods, FLOSS, programming, data, generative art, web art, design systems, publishing, typography, language, installation and experience, anarchism and mutual aid, interface and interaction, music, sound, video.
Sample Classes
- Material Studio: Code (STDO-1470)
- Design Studio 1 — Introduction to Design (STDO-2630)
- Typography Studio (STDO-2662)
- Design Theory (STDO-2670)
- Design Studio 4 — Projects in Design (STDO-3910)
- Senior Design Studio, Honours (STDO-4720)
- Senior Design Seminar, Honours (STDO-4730)