“The Wilderness Downtown,” by Arcade Fire
Arcade Fire have teamed up with Chris Milk and some Google engineers to produce one of the best seamless emotional experiences I’ve seen on the internet lately: an interactive music video for the single “We Used To Wait”—just type in the address of the house you grew up in, and prepare to get wrapped up in the warm, fuzzy feeling of sepia toned teenage angst.
Despite all the extra browser chrome and pop-up windows, this really brings out my favorite part of the internet: creative, personal, and interactive pieces of art that leverage modern tech for new meaning. In that sense, Wilderness Downtown is most similar to Office Max’s holiday elf videos and the related Jib Jab flash presentations, except far, far more polished (and entirely HTML5).
In this case, most of the content for the video is already out there (Google Maps satellite photos), but it’s been repackaged in a fresh and totally unexpected way. Very well done.
