A Tuned Body
Research, Methodology, Performance
Developed while in residency at Grabowsee in August 2024, A Tuned Body sprouts from a complex conceptual net, which traces the ley lines between personal queer and trans experience, intersectional environmentalism, and sympoietic ecology. The methodology of tuning emerged from our curiosity in learning to move in and out of shared consciousness.
Research, Methodology, Performance
By Madelyn Byrd and Lou Croff Blake
Grabowsee, 2024
Developed while in residency at Grabowsee in August 2024, A Tuned Body sprouts from a complex conceptual net, which traces the ley lines between personal queer and trans experience, intersectional environmentalism, and sympoietic ecology. The methodology of tuning emerged from our curiosity in learning to move in and out of shared consciousness.
We live and breathe the rhizomatic nature of queer community in Berlin, in which each person proffers their own self-actualized authenticity, forming a lush creative ecology. We evolve (as queer individuals, and as a queer legacy) in deep entanglement with those in our community as well as with our non-human neighbors and with our environment; this sympoiesis of queer culture is a model which may inspire an Other future vision: one in which flux is embraced, in gender, in perception, in growth and degrowth.
Gravity PleasureLabel & Event Series
Gravity Pleasure is a label and event series that highlights the intersection of queer ecology, hydrofeminism, and sound and uplifts women, trans, and non-binary artists working within the realm of ambient, dub, experimental, and leftfield music. It is co-run by Madelyn Byrd and Ashlynn White, who believe these marginalized groups deserve more visibility and inclusion in the industry, and they hope to contribute to positive change and greater representation.
Label & Event Series
Run by Madelyn Byrd & Ashlynn White
2025
Gravity Pleasure is a label and event series that highlights the intersection of queer ecology, hydrofeminism, and sound and uplifts women, trans, and non-binary artists working within the realm of ambient, dub, experimental, and leftfield music. It is co-run by Madelyn Byrd and Ashlynn White, who believe these marginalized groups deserve more visibility and inclusion in the industry, and they hope to contribute to positive change and greater representation.
The event series generates richly dimensional experiences by weaving together workshops, collaborative speculation, music performances and, yes, pleasure. Gravity Pleasure rejects the consumption mindset that is all too prevalent in nightlife and instead seeks to dissolve the boundaries between education, entertainment, and play. Gravity Pleasure proposes emergent participation models within a durational and interactive context to strengthen ties between our local community and the environment. Gravity Pleasure’s signature aesthetic touch: the performers live-score satellite imagery of Earth’s surface. By shifting our perception of scale, speed, and mass, we remind ourselves that we are human bodies belonging to a planetary body, and our home is part of a shared, pluriversal whole.
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Naturopathic SomaestheticsWorkshop
‘Naturopathic’ alludes to well-being conjured from natural substances. ‘Somaesthetics’ is embodied aesthetic experience; it flips the hierarchy that privileges verbal, narrative experience, and instead centers knowledges that cannot be conveyed in words. We pair these concepts with the practice of automatic fashioning, which, much like automatic writing, channels stream of consciousness; it is an intuitive process of getting dressed.
Workshop
Developed by Madelyn Byrd and Lou Croff Blake
ROTA Festival & AADK, 2023
‘Naturopathic’ alludes to well-being conjured from natural substances. ‘Somaesthetics’ is embodied aesthetic experience; it flips the hierarchy that privileges verbal, narrative experience, and instead centers knowledges that cannot be conveyed in words. We pair these concepts with the practice of automatic fashioning, which, much like automatic writing, channels stream of consciousness; it is an intuitive process of getting dressed.
The resulting methodology uses a locavore material palette, and can be transposed into any region and biome. The learning objective is, in a broad sense, a heightened empathy for earth that incites environmental activism. More acutely, we seek the body's knowledge of place beyond verbal description, repositioning the ‘second body’ (earth) as the ‘first home’ (clothing). The somaesthetic memories we hold of Blanca can be described – such as the tickling pressure of wrapping one’s forearms in the pink peppercorn tree’s viney branches, or the sound and texture of inserting an entire hand into a massive aloe steak – but they must be felt to be truly known.
Subversive Creative Practice & Sonic Worldbuilding
Course
Subversive Creative Practice & Sonic Worldbuilding is a 4-week course that combines intuition, queer theory, and music production to explore sonic fictional worlds and energize the creative process. Together, we investigate ways to hack flow through destructive processes, while challenging and critiquing dominant production standards to engage in playful sound exploration. Using sound as a queer and feminist autoethnographic device, we tune into embodied and environmental knowledge to reimagine and reclaim the powers of creativity, sound, and expression.
Course
Developed & Taught by Madelyn Byrd
Soundial, 2024
Subversive Creative Practice & Sonic Worldbuilding is a 4-week course that combines intuition, queer theory, and music production to explore sonic fictional worlds and energize the creative process. Together, we investigate ways to hack flow through destructive processes, while challenging and critiquing dominant production standards to engage in playful sound exploration. Using sound as a queer and feminist autoethnographic device, we tune into embodied and environmental knowledge to reimagine and reclaim the powers of creativity, sound, and expression.
Throughout the course, we hold space for discussing barriers faced by gender-diverse artists, collaboratively imagining and creating queer/feminist alternatives in a supportive atmosphere. The course highlights works by pioneering and contemporary theorists and musicians for inspiration. Participants develop a portfolio of exploratory works, receiving conceptual and technical feedback each week.

Sonic Worldbuilding II: Methodology in Practice
Course
Sonic Worldbuilding II: Methodology in Practice is a 4-week course exploring sound and its possibilities. Creativity and sound can be more than just a balm for precarious and difficult times. During the course, we co-explored sound as an apparatus of interconnectedness, tuning our sensitivity to what is, and daring toward the sonic vistas of what if.
Course
Developed & Taught by Madelyn Byrd
Soundial, 2024
Sonic Worldbuilding II: Methodology in Practice is a 4-week course exploring sound and its possibilities. Creativity and sound can be more than just a balm for precarious and difficult times. During the course, we co-explored sound as an apparatus of interconnectedness, tuning our sensitivity to what is, and daring toward the sonic vistas of what if.
We integrate embodiment, intuition, critical theory, and music production to develop a meaningful and transformative creative practice.
Part II emphasized the production and development of an idea from start to finish, with a stronger focus on practice and technical skill-sharing. Each step of the process will be informed by the methodology developed in Part I. With these in mind, the course navigates each step of the creative process.
Our Tomorrow
Radioshow
Our Tomorrow is a radio show exploring utopia, cooperative transformation, and soft revolution via deep-listening, all-genre mixes from visionary artists and collectives around the globe. Rooted in queer futurity, the show draws a bridge between what's possible in sound to what's possible in society. Emphasizing collaboration as a vital practice, the show spawned several long-distance mixes between various artists. The series has been fortunate to work with a range of visionary artists and collectives, including Salamanda (Seoul), Nexcyia (London), Mitamine Lab (Mexico City), Living Room (Lisbon), amongst others In 2022, the show was highlighted by Philip Sherburne for Pitchfork’s Best Mixes of the Year So Far.
Radioshow
Hosted by Slowfoam aka Madelyn Byrd
Internet Public Radio, 2021 - 2022
Our Tomorrow is a radio show exploring utopia, cooperative transformation, and soft revolution via deep-listening, all-genre mixes from visionary artists and collectives around the globe. Rooted in queer futurity, the show draws a bridge between what's possible in sound to what's possible in society. Emphasizing collaboration as a vital practice, the show spawned several long-distance mixes between various artists. The series has been fortunate to work with a range of visionary artists and collectives, including Salamanda (Seoul), Nexcyia (London), Mitamine Lab (Mexico City), Living Room (Lisbon), amongst others In 2022, the show was highlighted by Philip Sherburne for Pitchfork’s Best Mixes of the Year So Far.
Output RitualFilm, 19:45 min.
Film, 19:45 min.
Created by Madelyn Byrd
Featuring Tabitha Denson, Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelova, Sharece Anissa Phillips, Tessa Magnuson
Künstler Künstlerin, 2021
Output Ritual is a 20-minute visual poem and sound collage; a love letter between long-distance friends in collaboration seeking connection during lockdown in 2020. The project engages with the collaborative processes of five queer/femme artists working in long-distance dialogue using their various creative disciplines to explore nuances of isolation, transcend geographical boundaries, and the multifaceted aspects of quarantine life. From examining domestic tensions to the slippery nature of time during the pandemic, the artists collectively navigate and depict the intricacies of their microcosmic existence. Poetry, sound, movement, and dream-like landscapes intertwine and contort into a surreal soup, extending beyond the four walls of the artists’ bedroom cocoons in a collective expedition towards interconnection. Output Ritual holds the digital twin with a delicate optimism, a portal of belonging across time and space.
Sky, A.I.
Film, 11:41 min.
Sky, A.I. is a raw video and installation presented at Plan Espositivo (Blanca, ES) following a month-long residency at AADK. It combines an A.I. generated script, deepfake technology mapped onto early CGI, psychosomatics, movement, and satellite imagery to speculate on a tangential posthumanism. Inspired by the rural environment surrounding Blanca, Sky A.I. depicts the Wild West of technology, once a test site where possible futures and open-source tools held the promise of global connection and transmission -- a swiftly evaporated technotopian dream. Today, technofascism has harnessed this technology for profit, supplanting a bygone fantasy for data extraction, commodification, and political control.
Film, 11:41 min.
Created by Madelyn Byrd
AADK, 2021
Sky, A.I. is a raw video and installation presented at Plan Espositivo (Blanca, ES) following a month-long residency at AADK. It combines an A.I. generated script, deepfake technology mapped onto early CGI, psychosomatics, movement, and satellite imagery to speculate on a tangential posthumanism. Inspired by the rural environment surrounding Blanca, Sky A.I. depicts the Wild West of technology, once a test site where possible futures and open-source tools held the promise of global connection and transmission -- a swiftly evaporated technotopian dream. Today, technofascism has harnessed this technology for profit, supplanting a bygone fantasy for data extraction, commodification, and political control.
In Sky, A.I.’s reconfiguration, hierarchies are subverted and reimagined to expand their scope and reveal a transient, autonomous digital realm overlaying the visibly natural world. Here, faces and bodies contort, A.I. warns of its power, iPhone signals disrupt an avian chorus, and the birth of techno-intelligence and a post-human reality emerges in fragmented movements superimposed over satellite views of Vega Alta del Segura.
Every Home
Every Home is an ongoing research project that dialogues with feelings of home by visiting - via warped satellite imagery - every home I’ve lived in. By delving into the intricate interplay between the elusive sense of belonging, rootedness, and displacement, the project investigates the formulation of domestic identity. It draws inspiration from the theory that the embodiment of home memory extends beyond a mere physical space, intertwining with our corporeal existence and self-perception. Architectural spaces - both from our past and present - are active agents that persistently resonate with our senses, experiences, and self-conception. Although moving from place to place, living out of suitcases, resisting ownership and material belonging, the journey itself is a process of always coming home.
Documentation//Creative Research
Every Home is an ongoing research project that dialogues with feelings of home by visiting - via warped satellite imagery - every home I’ve lived in. By delving into the intricate interplay between the elusive sense of belonging, rootedness, and displacement, the project investigates the formulation of domestic identity. It draws inspiration from the theory that the embodiment of home memory extends beyond a mere physical space, intertwining with our corporeal existence and self-perception. Architectural spaces - both from our past and present - are active agents that persistently resonate with our senses, experiences, and self-conception. Although moving from place to place, living out of suitcases, resisting ownership and material belonging, the journey itself is a process of always coming home.
In A Smother of Foam