About Away
We think the modern mind needs somewhere to go.
We live surrounded by technology designed to keep us connected.
Work follows us home. News follows us to bed. Entertainment fills the gaps. The same device carries our friends, clients, calendar, camera, bank, music, memories and an effectively infinite supply of things to think about.
It's extraordinary.
It's also a lot.
AWAY exists because we think one of the most valuable things technology can now do is help us spend meaningful time away from technology.
Not forever.
Just long enough to remember what we're like without all the input.
The World of Aways
Find the best places in Australia to properly disconnect.
AWAY began with that simple idea.
Not somewhere to take your laptop.
Not somewhere with a “digital detox” package alongside twelve other amenities.
Places where being offline feels natural.
Remote cabins. Wilderness stays. Islands. Farms. Retreats. Quiet houses. Places surrounded by trees, water, mountains, animals, weather and space.
Places worth disappearing into for 72 hours or more.
We call them Aways.
Together they form the World of Aways, a growing collection of regenerative retreats for the modern wired mind.
We believe three days properly away can become a normal part of looking after ourselves.
Not an escape from life.
Part of a good one.
Find yourself there
There is something that happens when the inputs change.
You sleep differently. Walk more. Look further into the distance. Have longer conversations. Follow thoughts without interruption. Get bored. Notice things. Make things. Remember things you meant to do.
Eventually, the noise starts to fall away.
We became interested in that state.
Not simply where people went to find it, but whether some of the qualities of an Away could be brought back into everyday life.
That question led to HALO.
HALO is our screen-free wearable for the time between Aways.
It delivers Virtual Aways, responsive experiences designed to create moments of regeneration wherever you happen to be.
At your desk. Walking home. Between meetings. Under a tree. On a plane. Lying on the floor.
But HALO isn't simply another device for playing guided meditation or wellness content.
Because traditional media has a limitation.
It doesn't know what it's doing to you.
- A meditation keeps instructing whether you've settled or not.
- A piece of music keeps playing regardless of your response.
- A guided experience follows the same timeline whether you're deeply engaged, distracted, activated or half asleep.
It's one-way.
We wondered what would happen if the experience could listen too.
The first medium that experiences you while you experience it.
HALO senses while it produces.
Its sensing layer observes aspects of your physiological response while the experience is happening, allowing the system to respond as the experience unfolds.
- Sense
- Produce
- Sense
- Adapt
- If you're settling, the experience can respond.
- If something isn't producing the intended response, it can change.
- If silence appears more useful than another instruction, it can become quiet.
Over time, HALO can develop an understanding of how you respond rather than assuming every nervous system needs exactly the same thing.
The recording becomes a feedback loop.
The content becomes an experience.
And the experience becomes responsive.
Virtual Aways
For everything in between.
We call the experiences delivered through HALO Virtual Aways.
They aren't intended to replace the real thing.
Twenty minutes wearing a device is not three days beside a river with your phone turned off.
The real Away remains the ultimate reset.
Virtual Aways are for everything in between.
- A short transition out of a demanding morning.
- A longer walk without a screen.
- Space before creative work.
- The end of a day spent online.
- An hour where nothing wants anything from you.
Sound, silence, spatial audio, gentle instruction and other sensory elements can form part of the experience. HALO's sensing makes those elements responsive to the person actually experiencing them.
You don't need to watch.
You don't need to scroll.
You don't need to analyse another dashboard.
Put HALO on. Leave the screen behind.
Retreat Wear
We think wearables can become something different.
Less technology for measuring every detail of ourselves.
More technology that helps create the conditions to actually be ourselves.
That's why we call HALO Retreat Wear.
The World of Aways gives us the ultimate version: enough distance, time and environmental change to properly disconnect and regenerate.
HALO explores how some of those qualities can travel with us.
And when a Virtual Away isn't enough?
Go properly Away.
Explore the World of AwaysTechnology should give us more life, not more technology.
That's the idea connecting everything we make.
We aren't anti-technology.
Quite the opposite.
Technology has become powerful enough that we can start asking more of it than engagement.
- Can it give our attention back?
- Can it recognise when less input would be better?
- Can it help us leave the screen rather than invent another reason to look at one?
- Can the connected world make it easier to disconnect?
We think it can.
And sometimes the most advanced thing technology can do is know when to disappear.