Abraham Burickson and Matthew Purdon, having already put together a team to do experiments in artmaking, are on a writing retreat with some friends in Big Sur, California. They go for a hike in Andrew Molera State Park and develop the idea of the one-person performance.

Abraham Burickson and Shoshana Green produce the first Odyssey for Matthew Purdon. It is eight hours long, and when it is finished, Matthew is ecstatic. The piece is executed with the help of the early Odyssey Works team members Phil Kohlmetz and Amy Petrolati, among others.

The team produces an Odyssey for Abraham Burickson.

The team produces Metamorphosis for Shoshana Green. It is their first twenty-four-hour experience and involves Shoshana spending the night in a cocoon on the cliffs by the ocean. She is carried to a park where a monarch butterfly migration is happening and is unbound to find she has wings.

Odysseys are produced for the team members John Guzzardo, Phil Kohlmetz, and Amy Petrolati all in anticipation of their weddings.

Inside the Labyrinth is produced for Henry Rosenthal. This is the first Odyssey made for a non–team member. Half the performance takes place on a four-hundred-foot retired military ship, which serves as an underworld.

Locating the Borderlands, the first experiment in working with multiple participants (nine), takes place in San Francisco.

An Odyssey is produced for the team member Nell Waters in San Francisco.

The Moveable Feast is produced in Austin as a collaboration among ten artists. The production involves five different participants and is a part of the Fusebox Festival.

The Odyssey Lab, a performance laboratory dedicated to investigating basic ideas in art and performance, is founded. The first two retreats take place on farms, one north of Seattle and the other north of San Francisco. They investigate the line between reality and performance, and the function of place and time in time-based art, resulting in two different Odysseys: You Who Never Arrived, for Lisa Brunner, and The Necessary Angel, for Sasha Wizansky.

Abraham Burickson’s play Complicity — an experiment in creating a scripted Odyssey — is produced at Cornell University.

Christine Jones’ Theatre for One appears in Times Square.

In London, the Battersea Arts Centre hosts a one-on-one theater festival.

The Midden of Possibility, an Odyssey for Kristina Kulin, takes place in New York City and upstate New York. It is funded by Cornell University and produced alongside a team of students.

Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More opens in New York City to rave reviews. A wave of immersive performance in New York and San Francisco follows in its wake.

The Narrative Spiral is produced for Laura Espino in San Francisco, and The Map Is Not the Territory, for Carl Collins, is produced in New York. The New York Times calls Odyssey Works “a beautiful inefficiency.”

When I Left the House It Was Still Dark, for Rick Moody, is produced in New York as a part of the BEAT Festival.

An Odyssey is made for Dare Turner and another is made for the team member Jen Harmon.

Odyssey Works: Pilgrimage is produced for participant Ayden LeRoux. The Odyssey has a spiral diagram structure, leaving it open ended such that the narrative arc doesn’t complete until 2024, when Ayden walks the Camino in Spain.

Publication of Odyssey Works: Transformative Experiences for an Audience of One, by Abraham Burickson and Ayden LeRoux. Princeton Architectural Press. It discusses the first fifteen years of the group’s work. Released on election day. The book release party is a well-attended but somber reminder of the longing for community.

Based on the principles laid out in their book, Odyssey Works begins bringing experience design practices to organizations such as Apple, Facebook, The Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and others. They begin the development of an Experience Design Pedagogy.

Odyssey Works: The Woven Life is the first performance created as part of the Odyssey Works Master Class. Sited in Baja, Mexico, the Odyssey is driven by questions of creativity within community, and was created for participant Suldano Abdiruham.

During the second Odyssey Works Master Class, a crew of fellows dives deep into a vision of a post-apocalyptic future within which a community of artists turns toward creating their First Chapters. For participant Joshua Rubin, the Odyssey will feel eerily prescient in just a few months…

Pandemic! Like everything else, Odyssey Works goes online. Hundreds of experience designers from around the world attend online workshops, connecting with one another and recognizing a much larger and emergent community.

The Book of Separation, an online experience is built in collaboration with AnyOneThing in London. The experience is built on a bespoke interactive platform combining robocalls, texting, walking videos, and individualized experiences for pairs of separated friends. There is no Zoom. Hundreds connect with distant loved ones in a manner unlike anything previously available.

The Experience Design Incubator, a prequel to the Certificate Program, is launched, building community around the development of experiences by artists from around the world.

The first cohort of the Experience Design Certificate Program begins their year-long journey through thinking and making in community. The group presents their work publicly in New York City, on Broadway.

The Road to TAZ, a long-delayed Odyssey is created for Jude Regula in Portugal. It focuses on ideas of transformation and the underland, moving from Lisbon to the countryside and back.

The first Odyssey Works Family Reunion is a different kind of gathering, focused on conversations within a supportive community exploring a novel practice together.

The second year of the Certificate Program.

Released by Yale University Press, Abraham Burickson’s Experience Design, a Participatory Manifesto announces an approach to experience design that covers all modes of making and challenges designers to consider the bigger picture of their work. The book becomes the textbook for the Experience Design Certificate Program.

The third year of the Certificate Program expands to two cohorts on two different days, focused on European and American time zones.