“Enter the address of the home where you grew up” is the first thing that “The Wilderness Downtown,” an interactive film made by Chris Milk, featuring Arcade Fire’s “We Used to Wait,” asks viewers to do. Once you’ve entered your address, a clip of a kid wearing a floppy hood running down a wet suburban street begins to play with the Arcade Fire’s “We Used to Wait” in the background. Soon, another window pops up, showing small black birds flying across an orange sky. Eventually multiple windows are playing at once all over the screen, one with an overhead view of your childhood home, courtesy of Google Maps, and later 360 panoramas of your street.
As if this wasn’t enough to get you reliving your childhood in the suburbs, a prompt appears as Win Butler sings “I’m gonna write a letter to my true love,” asking you to type or draw, in the viney, organic font featured on the site, a letter to your younger self. After that, more windows pop up more frequently all over the screen, like a fireworks finale.
The video experience works best in Google Chrome. [via Stereogum]