Arcade Fire – “The Wilderness Downtown” – Check this out!

9:18 am 0 Comments

Wow so the new “music video” if you can even call it that by Arcade Fire is insane, guess its pretty awesome when you have a multi-billion dollar behemoth named Google lending you a hand. The experience is highly interactive and makes use of various Google technologies to create a highly personalised experience for each viewer.

Wondering what the f#uk I’m talking about go check it out. It’s awesome, and I really liked the song as well – So a double thumbs up for this post!

So now that you’ve watched it

You may be wondering who, how and why? Well Google is sporting a stiffy when it comes to HTML5 and is constantly looking for new ways to show off its capabilities, especially with regards to its Chrome Browser. So as an experiment designed to show off what HTML5 can do, Google Chrome teamed up with Arcade Fire and director Chris Milk to create a custom interactive video for their song, “We Used To Wait.”, the experience is called, “The Wilderness Downtown” and is obviously best viewed in Chrome or other HTML5-compliant browsers.

The video uses Google Earth, Google Streetview and a special Google Routing API to show different perspectives and shots based on the address you entered in the beginning, while corresponding to the visuals of the kid running around.

I thought it was extremely innovative and a fun way to watch a music video, the old upload to Youtube trick and thinking you’re all Web 2.0 is definately a thing of the past. I’m extremely interested to see what starts happening in the near future as every tom dick and Lady Gaga hops on the bandwagon.