_The Wilderness Downtown

Chris Milk’s The Wilderness Downtown is an interactive music video for the Arcade Fire’s “We Used to Wait.” Built for Google Chrome, using HTML5, Milk tests the technical possibilities of the software while creating an interactive and highly nostalgic narrative personalized to each user. When a web visitor arrives at The Wilderness Downtown, the site prompts him to enter the address of his childhood home. The project uses the Google Street View API to integrate images of this home into the music video, along with a letter the user can write to their childhood self.

The Wilderness Downtown received wide acclaim for its innovative use of web technology and the emotional power of its narrative.