Each year, more than 200,000 people make the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Some do it only for recreation, but most have something personal to process. The communal hardship of the walk sets the conditions for a particular kind of openness between complete strangers. They listen to each other’s stories and put their own thoughts in order.

Making innovative use of augmented reality, Pilgrim is a phone application which lets you accompany a diverse group of walkers. If you adjust to one walker’s tempo, you’ll hear him talk about a relationship breakdown. Another person is searching for a new goal in life. Other people are less willing to share their personal feelings. They just want to be part of the group—and the group isn’t talking continuously anyway. You’ll hear ambient noise and the occasional singing from a church service. Pilgrim is a journey with multiple meanings that can be traveled at various tempos.

This is the world’s first augmented reality podcast.It was created in partnership with BOSE AR as one of their very first mobile storytelling applications to demonstrate BOSE’s move into augmented reality. BOSE announced their 50 million dollar fund and Pilgrim was selected as one of these. Pilgrim premiered in Amsterdam in 2018 at Europe’s largest documentary filmfestival to critical acclaim. The innovative nature of Pilgrim has been recognised by the sound community, the immersive technology community and the storytelling community and branding. A working group from Columbia Universityfocusing on a mix of storytelling, play, design and code included Pilgrm in a list of the top 52projectsof 2018that moved them from across the world. The International Society for Presence Research wrote about Pilgrim, describing it as ‘...a reminder of how powerful audio, including audio without video, can be in evoking presence.’Voices of VR, the leading industry podcast on interactive media, which interviews pioneering artists, technologists and storytellers driving the resurgence of virtual reality and augmented reality dedicated an entire episode to Pilgrim. Ken Bye commented on the innovative nature of Pilgrim, where he compares previous augmented audio storytelling and notes ‘but what’s made clear to me with Pilgrim experience is that there will be all sorts of different location-based, AR audio stories...’.The Sound Effectan industry focused website in February 2019rounded up highlights and listed Pilgrim as number three on a list of 7 ‘new podcasts worth hearing’ and described it as an example of ‘the new medium of AR documentaries’

COMING SOON!