MOZILLA FOUNDATION AND DORIS DUKE FOUNDATION BACK 20 ARTISTS TO SHAPE WHAT TECH GETS BUILT NEXT

The first grantees of the $11 million Artists Make Technology initiative will build new technologies across AI, robotics, haptics, spatial audio and more

BARCELONA, Spain, Oct. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Mozilla Foundation today announced the first 20 grantees of Artists Make Technology (AMT), an $11 million initiative developed with the Doris Duke Foundation that gives performing artists the funding and technical resources to build technologies for use in their own fields.

Announced at the annual Mozilla Festival in Barcelona, the inaugural cohort spans the U.S. and works across a range of disciplines including robotics, AI, spatial audio, haptics, mixed reality, and motion capture. Projects include a six-legged robot that becomes a choreographic partner for disabled dancers, haptic technology that helps deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences to feel music, open-source live captions for theaters made by AI and human editors working together, and software that can capture the microtones of Arab maqam.

While much of the tech industry is extracting from artists to advance corporate bottom lines, AMT flips the script so that artists determine what technology gets built, who it serves, and what it makes possible.

Rewriting the terms between art and tech

AMT puts artists at the beginning of the design process and gives them the funding, technical resources, and freedom to build.

Although artists often embrace technology, they rarely have a say in how it is designed. That can result in technology that simply doesn't work for them, from music software built solely around the Western 12-note scale to assistive technologies that require disabled dancers to adapt to it, rather than the other way around.

"Artists' work is helping to power the development of AI, but artists themselves have had far too little say in what gets built. That is leading to an imagination deficit, and it's already apparent in the tools we're ending up with," said Ziyaad Bhorat, Vice President of Imagination & Strategic Growth at Mozilla Foundation. "Artists have always experimented with new technologies, challenged their limits, and asked what could exist instead. Artists Make Technology gives them the resources and freedom to build on their own terms, putting their work inside technology development instead of downstream of it."

Investing in artists before the technology industry will

Funding drives which ideas get developed and which never get off the ground. AMT brings arts philanthropy into the development of new technology at an earlier stage, giving artists the resources to help shape it from the start rather than simply responding once it has already been built.

The $11 million, three-year initiative has raised $8 million to date, with support from the Doris Duke Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. Since its announcement in January 2026, two additional funders have joined: the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Omidyar Network.

"When artists design technology, the result isn't just better tools, it's a more imaginative and inclusive technological future," said Ashley Ferro-Murray, Program Director for the Arts at the Doris Duke Foundation. "We are proud to support these visionary grantees as they pioneer new possibilities across the tech landscape and pave the way for other artists to follow in their footsteps."

The AMT initiative plans to award up to 40 grants over three years. This first cohort was selected from 392 applications and will share $2.75 million, with individual grants of up to $150,000.

From one artist's studio to an open-source commons

The 20 projects show what artists can do when they have the resources to build their own tools instead of making do with someone else's. Across the cohort, many grantees will make their tools, specifications, or documentation openly available, building a replicable model for artist-led technology that can keep growing beyond the Lab.

Many of these projects are being built to be shared and range from preserving cultural heritage to creating new ways to experience music and performance. Recordings of Queen Liliʻuokalani's piano will be transformed into a free digital instrument for Hawaiian musicians and the diaspora, while 3D "living ghosts" of blues elders, captured using LiDAR, will form a community-owned digital monument. Other projects include a sound theatre where audiences create music through movement; technology that allows artists to plan a venue's sound, lighting and staging before they arrive; a portable spatial-audio system that other artists can learn to compose with; and an open-source tool that visualises what happens inside a dancer's body as they move.

The 2026 cohort

Albany Park Theater Project • alexa dexa • Center for Cultural Vibrancy • L. Jenna Riashi Varga • DeltaARTS • Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) • Extreme Lengths Productions • Ryat Yezbick • HowlRound Theatre Commons • James Allister Sprang • Lars Jan • Leilehua Lanzilotti • Leslie Cuyjet • Stefon Harris • Nile Harris • Thomas F. DeFrantz/SLIPPAGE, Northwestern University • STUDIO F.A.C.E. • sweat variant • University of Maryland, College Park, Jill Marie Bradbury • Balletic Athletic, an artist collaborative of Wendy Yu, Whitney Schmanski, and Alexis Copithorne

The inaugural cohort will convene at the Artists Make Technology Lab Assembly in Detroit on November 13, 2026.

Finalists

Casita Maria Center for Arts & Education • Jessie Cox • Laura Luna Castillo • Stop That Bangin Productions • Miriam Parker • Natasha Tsakos • Etienne Mason • Alejandro Moreno Jashes • Annie Saunders • MaryAnn Talavera • Yanira Castro • Joshua William Gelb • Arts Council of New Orleans • AXIS Dance Company • Brian Brooks Moving Company • IMGE Dance • Louisiana Museum Foundation • Prevision Labs • Cinthia Chen

About The Doris Duke Foundation
The mission of the Doris Duke Foundation (DDF) is to build a more creative, equitable and sustainable future. The foundation works across three areas: Arts & Culture; Nature; and Health & Well-being. DDF focuses its support to the performing arts on contemporary dance, jazz and theater artists, and the organizations that nurture, present and produce them. The Doris Duke Foundation is one of only two foundations in history to have received the National Medal of the Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts, presented by President Barack Obama, in special recognition of DDF's support of creative expression across the United States and bold commitment to artistic risk, helping artists, musicians, dancers and actors share their talents and enrich the cultural life of the nation. Visit www.dorisduke.org to learn more.

About Mozilla Foundation

Mozilla Foundation is a global nonprofit dedicated to ensuring the internet remains open, inclusive, and equitable. Founded in 2003, it supports people-first technology through funding, advocacy, education, and research.

Rooted in the open-source movement and guided by the Mozilla Manifesto, Mozilla Foundation focuses on critical issue areas like ethical data practices, healthy digital ecosystems and shifting digital power toward individuals and communities.

Its work connects technologists, researchers, policymakers, and activists to reimagine and rebuild systems to serve the public good. With over two decades of global impact, Mozilla Foundation continues to lead the movement for a better technology future—powered by people, open by design and fueled by imagination.

About Mozilla Foundation's Imagination Work

Mozilla Foundation's Imagination Work finds and funds the people building what technology should do next, before their ideas enter the mainstream. Through fellowships, artist residencies, early-stage grants, dedicated funds, and convenings around the world, we back artists, researchers, technologists, and communities whose ideas are still too early or too unusual for traditional funding, and carry their work into the institutions that can adopt it. Current bets include grassroots open source quantum computing, small AI models that run locally and keep data on the device, AI tools for democratic institutions, and Artists Make Technology, an $11 million multi-foundation fund putting performing artists at the center of technology development. The Imagination Work is the front end of Mozilla Foundation's mission. The organization that kept the internet open now works on what gets built on it, and who gets there first.

Note to editors: For further details, please visit http://mozillafoundation.org/artists-make-technology/2026-amt-cohort

Contact:
Taylor Jeffrey
[email protected]

SOURCE Mozilla Foundation