Thinking About Possibilities: Arcade Fire Tries To Build The House You Grew Up In Into Latest Music Video

from the greater-interactivity dept

Tue, Aug 31st 2010 4:00pm — Mike Masnick

Brandon was the first of a few of you to send over the news of how the band Arcade Fire's latest "music video" is actually an experiment in more interactive HTML 5 experiences. The idea is that you're supposed to put in the address of where you grew up, and the "video" (which actually involves a bunch of different windows, rather than a single "video" window) builds the street you grew up on into the video itself via Google maps satellite view and Google Street View. Honestly, the implementation is just so-so (didn't actually work for where I grew up, so I tried where I live now -- which is on a hill -- which looks funny since the guy in the video is running on totally flat ground). Still, the overall experience is neat in at least getting people to think about the possibilities for both HTML 5, as well as adding much more customization into content. It also might finally get people to realize that videos don't need to just sit in a single box... While I doubt many musicians are going to do the same thing, hopefully it does inspire others to start thinking (literally) out of the video box, and about more interesting opportunities.

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Filed Under: arcade fire, html 5, interactivity, music

8 Comments

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Jim, 31 Aug 2010 @ 4:30pm

It made my internal security warning go "Ping".
Information like that is commonly used as security and password recovery questions.
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Paul Hobbs (profile), 31 Aug 2010 @ 5:31pm

Blew me away
I put the address of my childhood home in and it worked perfectly. Even more amazing was that the satellite view showed the house before my parents added a garage/extension, which was back in the late 70s. I have no idea how Google could do that, but it was amazing for me to see my old house from when I was a child.
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Bill W (profile), 31 Aug 2010 @ 5:53pm

Like!
Great fun! My postcard ID is eqBQyc I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Danny, 1 Sep 2010 @ 6:03am

At least they are trying...
If even this goes nowhere its nice to see someone actually thinking and trying to do something different instead of the usually waiting to see what's popular then running it into the ground.
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Pete Braven (profile), 1 Sep 2010 @ 6:38am

Cutting edge in music isn't new yah know,..
I'm a musician and songwriter but my other passion is electronics and I've worked in that for years. It's interesting to see that in many cases when new technology has been introduced, it gets cloned into some musical application before the rest of the world has even 'got their boots on'.
The first magnetic recorders were supposed to be for communications but Bing Crosby saw the chance to try them for music. Hendrix liked the way his guitar sounded when a small transistor blew, we now have distorted guitar on nearly everything!
If the artist is left to get on with tye creative process that is in his/her head, rather than what is in the mind of some banker in accounts,.. the possibilities are endless!
As this brilliant novelty proves all too well.
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chris (profile), 1 Sep 2010 @ 7:44am

Re:
darn, if only you were able to put in some other address than the one you use for everything.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2010 @ 8:21am

heh.

"I think I broke iiiitttt!"
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Brendan (profile), 2 Sep 2010 @ 9:37am

Very cool
Worked well for me using Chrome.

Neat, I liked it.
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