Up your street: A video from your childhood

Montreal – Your childhood address is the focus of indie rock band Arcade Fire’s latest music video. The Wilderness Downtown, a collaboration between the band,video auteur Chris Milk and the Google Creative Lab, gives listeners a personal experience when they hear the We Used to Wait song from The Suburbs album.

It is an interactive music video built in HTML 5, using Google Maps and Street-view for Google Chrome Experiments. Users type in their home address on The Wilderness Downtown website and Google Maps and Google Street integrate the address into the video. Multiple screens appear. In one, as a reflection of the album a man, meant to be the user, is seen running on his childhood home street. The LS:N Global team tested several addresses from Kingston in Surrey to Linnégatan in Gothenburg. In the end, we were encouraged to send a postcard to our younger self.

Arcade Fire is on fire. In one clever way to attract consumers they recently released a digital artwork for the same album, which gives listeners a visual experience.