TrailOff v1

Toasterlab’s Involvement

Toasterlab developed the TrailOff app and integrated it with a web-based Audio Tour building platform built on top of the Place Lab Maptool.

Overview of Discipline, Context, Intention

TrailOff is a new mobile app designed to reimagine how we interact with recreational trails and, by extension, expand the diversity of users that seek them out. This immersive augmented reality audio performance presents ten original audio narratives, each connected to paths within the Philadelphia region’s expansive Circuit Trails network. Written by local authors in collaboration with Swim Pony Performing Arts and the Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC), these stories center experiences that connect with communities traditionally underserved by environmental programming.

Experience

The core of TrailOff lies in 10 unique sound walks: intimate journeys that use GPS to link audio storytelling to physical attributes along a mapped route. Each path features writing from a local artist along with underscored music and sound design, all tailored to sync to the movement of an audience member as they travel along a trail.

Accessed via a mobile app, listeners hear original dramas while walking along each route.

Development

Over a series of week-long residencies in Philadelphia, Toasterlab contributed technical guidance and practice experiments in the use of technology for place based storytelling from July 2018 until the apps launch in September 2020. 

Performance Runs

The TrailOff app was released in September of 2020 as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Arts Festival. The most recent version of the app is still available for download on iOs and Android.

Relevant Organizations and People

Swim Pony Performing Arts creates unique and deeply investigated live experiences that defy tradition,  and invite audiences to become curious, critical thinkers in the world.

The Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC) protects and restores the natural and built environments through innovation, collaboration, education, and advocacy.

Production Team
Adrienne Mackey – Lead Artist/Conceiver
Toasterlab – App Development
Michael Kiley – Composition and Sound Design
Maria Shaplin – Graphic Design
Eva Steinmetz – Production Management and Administration

Creators
afaq – The Way Sand Wants for Water
ari – Where the Light Won’t Go
Carmen Maria Machado – River Devil II: The Return
Denise Valentine – Deeply Routed
donia salem harhoor – A Sycamore’s Psalm
Eppchez! (Ep-chez Yes) – Appear to Me
Erin T. McMillon – The Inside Outside
Jacob Camacho – Conversations
Jacob Winterstein – The Land Remembers
Li Sumpter – Chronicles of Asylum