We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Daniel S. DeLuca a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Daniel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

“Risk” has always been a close companion in my art and life. I grew up in a place that normalized things like cliff-jumping, skiing, dirt biking, trail running, among other activities, and seeking adventure was an imperative. The freedom I had to explore was constrained mostly by the potential for physical harm. I wouldn’t describe myself as an extremist; for example, before diving head-first off a three-story cliff, I had a respectable amount of practice jumping feet first. Fast forward to today, and my favorite recreational activities are ice climbing and backcountry skiing, which are not particularly risk-averse sports but can be done in a reasonably safe manner.

Early in my art career, this initial orientation toward risk and experience found resonance and intellectual scaffolding in practices like performance art and the philosophy of John Dewey. Dewey’s philosophy of art as experience provided a framework that aligned well with my predispositions. His belief that art is not merely an object but a dynamic, interactive process helped me to deepen my own performative, sculptural, and socially engaged practices. Dewey’s principles affirmed that the ‘fugitive’ and indeterminate nature of my work—its ambivalence towards form—was not merely a stylistic choice but an ethical and philosophical one as well.

A tolerance for risk and an insatiable curiosity is what fuels my persistent exploration of theory and form in my artistic practice. As I engage the physical world in pursuit of meaningful embodied experience and understanding, so too do I now engage with the conceptual world, taking intellectual and artistic risks that challenge both myself and my audience.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Daniel, an artist, AI researcher and designer, with an interdisciplinary practice. I’ve had the opportunity to present my work in various venues, from the Institute of Contemporary Art and Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to international platforms like Venice International Performance Art Week. My art aims to provoke thought, engage communities, and build novel educational models that explore art, science, and technology. I am committed to creating projects that are context-sensitive and responsive to the community and environment they inhabit. My work tends to be minimally invasive, resource-efficient, and flexible, making them adaptable to various settings and scenarios. In the last three years I’ve been focused on AI and its relationship to aesthetics. I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how learning algorithms are impacting and will continue to impact culture and society.

I get a lot of my inspiration from science and engineering. I’m a curious person who is always asking how things work and what things are made of. I’ve always been amazed by how information and matter can be processed, transformed, transcribed, and communicated. One simple example is our ability to record and playback sound. Every sound creates a wave. Sound is a wave, it’s physical. Each wave is a unique signature or pattern that can be represented and recreated. In the case of a vinyl record for example, the unique “signature” or pattern of the sound wave is captured in its grooves. During playback, by tracing these grooves, the record player can recreate the original sound! It is so simple and it’s a phenomenon that we take advantage of everyday but there is something about it that blows my mind. I feel something magical in this process since it is not limited to sound but information as a whole. This process happens with language, writing, film, photography, genetics, and digital storage among other things. It is a foundation of technology as a whole.

Another aspect of science that impacts how I think about what I create as an artist is the way matter aggregates at various scales. It gets assembled from simple components into much more complicated expressions and systems of life. Subatomic particles make up atoms and atoms make up molecules and molecules make up cells which make up tissue and organs which assemble into our bodies.

Since this is a fact of how everything works, it is always happening, every person, every artist is in some process of aggregation. This is where my mind goes while I’m creating projects. In my digital work, I make a large number of assets using AI then I assemble them into new entities. I think of them as parts in a whole, the way cells make up organs. If you zoom in you can start to pick apart how each element functions and when you zoom out you see the larger system at play. I also try to have fun in the process and externalize feelings that inspire curiosity, fun, and sensuality, all with a healthy dose of weird.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I’ve spent the last 15 years working with galleries, museums, non-profit art spaces, and academia. I’m excited to take what I’ve learned in these spaces and apply them to more entrepreneurial efforts. I’m currently developing an apparel company that is inspired by art. science, research and education. The working title for this new initiative is “Curious Threads,” which focuses on condensing complex ideas from diverse fields into easily understandable models. The designs are intended not only to be fashionable and fun but also to serve as tools for learning. What marks this as a significant pivot is the financial angle—the objective is to generate income that can support the experimental research projects I am passionate about. I suspect this pivot feels difficult due to the complex relationship with business that prevails in the art community, where discussions about finances—unless in the context of criticizing capitalism—are often avoided. There is a lot of baggage to unpack in accepting that earning money from your creativity is not a negative pursuit. To an entrepreneurial crowd, this perspective may seem odd, but in some circles of the art world and academia, there exists a staunch anti-capitalist ideology that renders discussions about economic incentives in your practice almost taboo. Personally, I believe there are numerous new models for self-support, and artists, in particular, stand to benefit greatly from leveraging their content creation skills to build self-sustaining practices. With this in mind, I’m exploring ways to apply theory to practice and deepen my understanding of business and economics. I’ve learned a great deal already, and as might be expected, I’ve found that artists share many traits with successful entrepreneurs, including creativity, vulnerability, and a willingness to take risks.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

At the core of my creative journey is a mission to bridge gaps—between disciplines, between people, and between complex theories and everyday understanding. Whether it’s through interactive installations, performance pieces, or now apparel, my work aims to simplify and communicate complex ideas to a broader audience. “Curious Threads” represents a natural extension of this mission. It allows me to encapsulate dense, intricate systems and theories into something as simple and accessible as a t-shirt, making complex knowledge easier to engage with. Adaptability is one of the key traits artists need to address the myriad challenges we face in society, including climate change, economic inflation, social justice issues, political polarization, and the accelerated impacts of AI systems. In a complex world that demands dynamic responses to rapid changes, my exploration of systems in art, science, and technology has yielded novel insights about adaptive strategies. I’m delighted to have made your acquaintance and am eager to share these insights with you and broader audiences in the future.

Contact Info:

• Website: danielsdeLuca.com
• Instagram: @danielsdeluca
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-deluca-72024a27/
• Twitter: @danielsdeluca