Gotta Catch ’em All

Eaux Claires is essentially split up the middle: its two larger stages and most of the food and beverage concerns to the west, with two smaller bandshells and the not-especially-silent disco to the east. To get from one side to the other, you’re forced to make your way down a wooded path that runs maybe a third of a mile. Lights dot the way on either side, glowing under the verdant green; little side trails pop up every so often, leading you deeper into the thicket. It was on my third trek down this path that I saw them: three kids, phones in hand, kneeling in the dirt, staring at something. I assumed they were snaring Pokémon. How wrong I was.

“It’s a mushroom,” one of them told me. “And there’s a diorama in there.” Seconds later, two more kids stumbled down the path, muttering something about “45 feet away.” They, too, bent before the mushroom. Where most fest apps are little more than e-programs, the Eaux Claires app was a scavenger hunt, a bullhorn, and even a carnival barker of sorts: When it announced the sale of some limited edition Bon Iver 12"s, people streamed toward the merch tent en masse.

Giving people something to do at a festival beyond walking around and drinking is generally a plus, and the little art installations and hidden treasures promised by the app were generally a nice respite from typical fest bustle. Still, throwing an extra layer of gamification on top threatened to tip the scales and push the FOMO way into the red. The constant hints of secret shows could be faintly maddening; many—myself included—assumed Justin Vernon might pop up somewhere, with little to no warning. So when I heard the first few seconds of “Holocene” while walking past the semi-hidden stage along the wooded path, I ran towards it, along with five others, only to find somebody testing levels on the PA. The woman running alongside me put it best: “You can’t do that to us, Justin Vernon!”