The Wilderness Downtown: An Interactive Film That Could Be the Future of Music Videos. What Does Your Wilderness Look Like?

Those who listen to Arcade Fire music are very aware of the emotional influence they posses. Their songs are often so vivid and emotionally charged that you as the listener become heavily immersed in their narrative. Well, now there is a new way to experience Arcade Fire in a cleverly designed interactive music video featuring the song “We Used To Wait” from the band’s latest album The Suburbs.

The concept is simple; The Wilderness Downtown personalizes the video in order to incorporate where you grew up into the story using Google Maps and Street-view. These features along with an image of a hooded person (most likely representing you) running through these suburban streets. All of these factors are then combined to make a very unique experience, one that is both inventive and entertaining.  And in terms of a style of music video for accompanying Arcade Fire’s song “We Used To Wait” there couldn’t be a more perfect fit, it takes the relatability of the song to another level altogether.

You do need to have Google’s internet browser Chrome in order to view videos and the manner they are displayed, kind of like a structured flurry of over and underlaid ad pop-ups providing different perspectives of the address you put in makes for something quite unique.  But about midway through you are asked to write a letter or draw a picture to your younger self. The letter you write can be stored in a virtual post box. There it is submitted to be a visual on Arcade Fire’s tour. If you have been to one of their shows on The Suburbs tour you know that the big screen acting as backdrop for the performance does come into play as a visual aid during the performance. That means your little note to your former self could make it into one of the band’s live performances! As well, these messages are submitted to ‘The Wilderness Machine’ which then prints off a hard copy of these messages on a post card with, get this, laden with birch seeds and can be panted to grow a tree.

When it comes to music videos there is really very little to get excited about, they have pretty much been the same for the past thirty years give or take some choreographic with few exceptions. But The Wilderness Downtown is… something.  Check out The Wilderness Downtown here.