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Visit the TrailOff website!
TrailOff is a transmedial walking performance created by Swim Pony in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC). Central to this free-to-download mobile app are original audio stories, inspired by urban, suburban, and rural nature trails. Each original story unfolds over a roughly 2-mile route and is written by a local author who demonstrates rigorous artistic practice and connections to communities traditionally underserved by environmental programming.
Audiences experience these intimate journeys through the app, which uses GPS triggering to link audio to physical attributes along the mapped route. Each author has created a unique audio story written specifically to be heard on their trail. Narration of the author’s text underscored with music and atmospheric sound design syncs to the user as they travel. Stories highlight features of the landscape, encouraging listeners to imagine the world around them from the writer’s unique perspective. Using additional sensor data (weather, date, time of day, walking pace) the narratives also contain subtle variations heightening the app’s “awareness” of what the listener does, giving them a magical experience of real-time response. After each walk, users can access informational behind-the-scenes insights into environmental and historic points of interest on the trail or check out podcast-style interviews with the writers.
Our 10 AMAZING Philadelphia authors include: afaq, ari, Jacob Camacho, Eppchez !, donia salem harhoor, Carmen Maria Machado, Erin T. McMillon, Li Sumpter, Denise Valentine, and Jacob Winterstein. Learn more about them here.
NEW for 2024 is TrailOff‘s first Seattle-based story featuring writer Clare Johnson’s exploration of disappearing Queer memory throughout the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
PRODUCTION TEAM
Lead Artist/Conceiver: Adrienne Mackey
Producing and Environmental Partner: The Pennsylvania Environmental Council
App Development: Echoes
Composition and Sound Design: Michael Kiley
Graphic Design: Maria Shaplin
Production Management and Administration: Nazlah Black, Jen Sung, Eva Steinmetz, Sara Wolff
Philadelphia-area story funding from The William Penn Foundation, The Barra Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation and The Network of Ensemble Theatres
Seattle story funding was supported, in part, by grants from 4Culture and ArtsWA.
swimpony.org 