About
ATONATON is a research studio inventing better ways to communicate with machines. We are a R&D lab dedicated to creative innovation in high-impact technologies. We believe that artist-led technical innovation will pull us towards more open and imaginative visions of the future. The goal of our work is to unlock greater understanding, agency, and optimism for how the future arrives. We leverage our deep expertise across art, design, computing, and robotics to build open-source tools and immersive installations that let people experience the future today.
ATONATON is led by Dr. Madeline Gannon, a multidisciplinary designer and inventor forging new futures for human-robot relations. Known as "The Robot Whisperer", Gannon blends techniques in art, design, computer science, and robotics to convince robots to do things they were never intended to do: from transforming giant industrial robots into living, breathing mechanical creatures, to taming hordes of autonomous machines to behave like a pack of animals. Her work bridges cutting-edge robotics, AI, and the human experience — proving that creativity is essential to shaping how these technologies impact society. As a former NVIDIA roboticist, she brings deep technical fluency to building more optimistic futures with machines.
Dr. Gannon believes that technology is a cultural medium, and tunes her work to engage communities across science and society. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Copernicus Science Centre and has been exhibited at cultural institutions worldwide. She has been recognized as a World Economic Forum Cultural Leader and named among the world's most influential women in robotics by Analytics Insight. Her work has been profiled by the BBC, NPR, the Guardian, Financial Times, WIRED, and FastCompany. She has held research positions at NVIDIA, and received residencies and awards from ETH Zurich, Autodesk, Carnegie Mellon, and the Knight Foundation. She holds a Ph.D in Computational Design from Carnegie Mellon University and a M.Arch from Florida International University.
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Contact Us
We love meeting new people excited about our future with machines. Email us at hello@atonaton.com or use the form below to start a conversation ❤️🤖❤️