The Arcade Fire released their second video for their latest album The Suburbs with, The Wilderness Downtown. It’s a synthesis of web technology, music and video to create an experience. It uses HTML 5 to drive much of video so for now Google Chrome or Safari 5 are the only browsers that can play it fully. (Firefox can, albeit somewhat lacking).
Before the video begins, you’re asked to enter the street you grew up on, and then the video begins to load. In the video, multiple screens pop up, one with video of a unisex person running through a suburban street and other windows playing animations. You’ll write a message to your younger self, and that address you entered will appear as a Google Earth flyover.
This isn’t their first foray into viral, interactive videos. With their last album, they released a web video, Neon Biblethat let you interact with Win Butler’s hands.