MADELYN BYRD (they/them) is an artist, musician, researcher, and curator based in Berlin. They create subversive spaces of curiosity, play, discomfort, and sentimentality to foster dialogues between humans, non-humans, and new technologies. Their overarching research integrates queer theory, hydrofeminism, and neuroaesthetics to prefigure unconventional ways of sensing and perceiving as entry points into post-anthropocentric healing and social transformation. In an evolving effort to map speculative realms, Madelyn creates albums, narrative mixes, world-building projects, multi-media collages, poetry, and social-praxis experiments. They hold a master’s in Neuroaesthetics from Goldsmiths, University of London, where they researched the impact of collaborative imagination on measures of connection and hope in social praxis art.

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SLOWFOAM is Byrd’s all-encompassing sound project that they produce, DJ, and perform under. As a world-building project, it is a space for them to trace the peripheries of ecology and technology, presence and possibility, and intrinsic, more-than-human connectedness. Drones, glitched-out textures, field recordings, obfuscated words, glossy sound design, off-kilter polyrhythms, electro-acoustics, and sparkling ephemera are a tapestry of artefacts from a genre-defying paraworld. Slowfoam carefully crafts these aural environments to plunge listeners into paradoxical pools of deep meaning and obscurity, bubbling with transformative potential and the magic of the in-between. 

Slowfoam is a former resident at Internet Public Radio, where they curated their monthly show, Our Tomorrow. They have released music on labels around the globe, including Jungle Gym Records (Los Angeles, USA), Lillerne Tapes (Chicago, USA), and Mappa (Lučenec, Slovakia), yielding features on Bandcamp, Electronic Sound Mag, Pitchfork, Boomkat, DJ Mag, The Wire Magazine, and Futurism Restated. They are currently represented by Somewhere Press (Glasgow, SL) with whom they released Transcorporeal Portal, their critically acclaimed debut LP, in March 2024.