Danny Cannizzaro

Background

About Danny Cannizzaro

Artist, creative director, and studio lead with deep technical expertise working in AI, interactive media, and emerging platforms. As co-founder of Tender Claws alongside Samantha Gorman, I have built and led multidisciplinary teams to develop award-winning projects that explore the possibilities of AI, VR, AR, and immersive performance. My work centers on shaping new creative paradigms—not just adapting existing forms to new media, but designing for their inherent properties. This approach has resulted in projects that range from AI-driven interactive narratives to real-time networked performances and large-scale immersive worlds. I have directed teams of artists, engineers, and performers—managing productions of up to 50 people—to develop works recognized by Sundance, Cannes XR, SXSW, the Emmy Awards, and the Independent Games Festival. These projects have launched in partnership with Meta, Google, Netflix, and major platforms, requiring not only creative vision but also strategic leadership in funding, production, and execution. With a background spanning visual arts, animation, software development, technical direction, and creative strategy, I work across disciplines to bridge conceptual, aesthetic, and engineering innovation. I specialize in building cohesive teams that can operate at the forefront of new technology, structuring creative processes that allow for both rigor and experimentation. At a time when large language models are redefining authorship, interactivity, and media production, I am focused on how these technologies can be directed with intentionality—creating new forms, rather than replicating old ones. Designing for the emergent, the interactive, and the yet-to-be-defined.