Explore Your Own Suburban Wilderness, Courtesy of Arcade Fire

September 1st, 2010

Screenshot

Canadian based rock band Arcade Fire is one of those indie bands that has buck the trend instead of selling out or watering down as they get bigger they just keeps getting better. This week they introduced a revolutionary new music video format.

The Wilderness Downtown uses a mashup of Google’s Street View, HTML5 video and some impressive overlays to create a multimedia viewing experience. All you need to do is input the address you grew up in and it will build an immersive film by director Chris Milk with Arcade Fire‘s “We Used To Wait” around it.

I recommend watching it as soon as possible. While it is not perfect (few pioneering experiments are), it is an extremely cool idea put into action.

Screenshot via designboom.com

The video is especially powerful for me, as the move I grew up in, is the home I watched my first music video in and this memory is only strengthened by the nostalgic atmosphere of the video.

Caveat: The clip requires Google Chrome (or a fully HTML5 Compliant browser). If you aren’t already using it, you really should be, so use this opportunity to download it! Also, for best results, close as many running programs as possible, all the interactive goodness taxes even the speediest processors.

We Used to Wait is found on Arcade Fire’s latest album, The Suburbs. The entire album has an urban planning theme, which makes it all the more awesome. Canadian, interactive AND urbanist, what more could I want!?!

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