News > Arcade Fire
The Arcade Fire Does Something Cool With The Internet
By Skwerl
Monday, August 30, 2010
Google has teamed up with The Arcade Fire and video director Chris Milk to make a crazy interactive video for their song We Used To Wait, set… on the street you grew up on.
On the Google / nerd side, it’s meant to show off the capabilities of HTML5, branded as an “experiment” for the Google Chrome browser, but it worked just fine for me in the HTML5 compliant Safari browser as well.
Here’s how it works: You head over to thewildernessdowntown.com, and plug in the address of the house you grew up in. The video gathers up a whole bunch of crazy aerial and street-level panoramas of your street from Google’s satellite spy cam gizmos, and HTML5 video is constructed on the fly, dynamically layering in elements of the music video over your intimately familiar scenery. You can even leave a handwritten postcard for your past self using a little HTML5 drawing tool.
After the video you can submit that postcard to be shared with other fans who can then respond to it, and it might possibly used in the band’s onstage presentations.
Pretty neat.
Very cool. Made me homesick as hell.
It would be cooler if it focused on the right house, rather than one 2 or 3 houses down. Oh well.
Got my house spot-on.
I think that’s a limitation of Google Street View, not this web video mash up.
I don’t remember my old address, but yea… really compelling approach to the medium.
Crows over Roy St sent shivers up me timbers.
Great post! Definitely worth checking out!
As you may know, I went home to the Bay Area earlier this month for three nights of Phish. It’s always hard to go home, as the Bay Area is far better than LA. Regardless of that FACT, I am here now, it is what it is. Growing up in the burbs between SF and SJ truly molded who I am. So a few days after I returned to LA, someone said listen to the new Arcade Fire. Not a fan of the band, I was like ok whatever. This is the album that spoke to me, the album that really hit home (no pun intended) and this video just makes me feel that connection so much more. Fuck you Arcade Fire, for making me feel homesick, lost, and depressed because I believed teachers, religious leaders and other influences. Fuck you Arcade Fire for writing the soundtrack to the current nervous breakdown that is my life. See you in October, fingers crossed “my letter to my younger self” makes it into your show :)
Great advertisement for Google Chrome…
Also very awesome. Welcome to a new level of advertising online and a new level of exposure for Arcade Fire.
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