Ingrid Ormevik

Trail Mix

Sandviken to Fløyen: a moving DJ set, and an invitation to the real one

This is happening for real. A hike from Sandviken sykehus up to Fløyen, with a DJ set that walks with us and performances along the way. Play the route first. Then come and walk it.

Jack goes in front with a DJ controller he insists on carrying up a mountain. I follow with a speaker on my back, and (less romantically) a roll of bin bags and a pair of plastic gloves packed in beside it. Everyone else walks with us. That's the format: not an audience standing in front of a stage, but a group moving through a place while the music moves with it.

The route is real and it is specific: Sandviken sykehus → Sandviksbatteriet → Sandvikspilen → the forest → Fløyen → back down in the dark. Six stretches, each with its own character, each with somewhere to stop.

It isn't about reaching Fløyen

It's about learning to notice Bergen. That's the actual premise, and it's why the game doesn't score you on speed.

There are three things the game pays attention to instead. Curiosity, did you look at anything. Care, did you leave the place better. Presence, did you stop. Stand still on the trail and Presence climbs on its own; the game is quietly telling you that stopping is a move. None of them is a score to max out. Walking fast raises one and starves another, and a good walk is a changing balance rather than a full bar.

Pick things up on the way

The bin bags are not a gesture. Bergen's trails carry other people's rubbish, and a group of forty walking the same route is forty pairs of eyes. If you see something, pick it up: gloves and bags come out of my pack and we carry it down. It costs nothing and it is the one part of the evening that leaves the mountain measurably better than we found it.

That's why it's in the game. Tap anything you spot on the trail (a bottle, a can, a wrapper) and it goes in the bag. Tap a harebell or a flat stone and nothing goes in the bag; you just noticed it, and the game counts that too.

The mountain is the character

Not Jack, not me. The idea I keep coming back to is that a place can become a character through your attention to it: it responds to how you move through it rather than following a script. Walk Sandvikspilen once and the forest is a forest. Walk it repeatedly and it starts recognising you: the same raven on the same stone, somebody waving because they remember you, a story you only get told the fourth time.

There is no single correct Bergen. One person's is birds, another's is the battery's stonework, another's is what Sandviken sykehus says about how we've treated mental illness, another's is the litter. The place stays historically and ecologically accurate; the relationship is yours.

That's also the research question I keep circling at the Center for Digital Narrative, where I've been a research intern. CDN works on algorithmic narrativity, electronic literature, game studies and what it calls extended digital narrative: stories that leave the screen and happen in rooms, landscapes and bodies. A hike with a route, chapters, a soundtrack and a set of choices about pace and attention is exactly that: a narrative you walk rather than read, with the mountain as co-author and the weather as an unreliable one.

So this page is doing two jobs. It's an invitation, and it's the argument for the format: a playable pitch for the kind of work I want to keep making, and want funded.

Six chapters, Sandviken to Fløyen and back down. Hold to walk. Tap what you find. Stop when something is worth stopping for. About seven minutes.

Come and do it properly

Everything in the game is real except the pixels. The trail is real, the gear is real, the two people carrying it up are real, the performances along the way are real, and the set at the top is going to happen with or without an audience, though it is significantly better with one.

You don't need to be fit and you don't need to know anything about music. The pace in the game is the pace on the day: steady, chatty, stopping whenever the view earns it or somebody has something to play. Bring shoes you don't mind getting muddy, a jacket for when the light goes, and something to drink. We'll bring the sound, the gloves and the bags.

• The route: Sandviken sykehus, up past Sandviksbatteriet, the climb at Sandvikspilen, through the forest to Fløyen, and back down as the light goes.
• How it runs: we walk together, the set moves with us, and there are stops along the route where people perform. No stage, no barrier, no queue.
• How long: a few hours up, a set at the top, and a slow descent. No summit-bagging, no rush.
• What it costs: nothing. It's a walk with a soundtrack.
• What you carry down: whatever litter you spotted on the way up.
• Who it's for: anyone who wants to come. Bring people.
• What it isn't: a race, a guided tour, or a gig you stand still at.

Want to perform on the way up?

There are slots along the route for anyone who wants one: a track, a poem, a field recording, something you've been making and haven't shown anyone. It doesn't have to be loud and it doesn't have to be finished. Tell me roughly what you'd do and roughly how long, and I'll find you a bend in the trail to do it on.

Want in? Mail me at ingrid.ormevik@student.uib.no with "count me in" and I'll send the date, the meeting point and the trailhead. Say if you're bringing anyone, so we know how loud to make it, and say if you want a slot.

We don't chase summits. We chase moments that stay. Come and get one.