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Friday, May 18, 2012, 10:22 PM Jackson Hole, Wyoming About ThoughtShaker

09.22.10 The Wilderness Downtown

By Chris D.

You've gotta give props to whomever was behind Google Chrome's PR/Ad campaign: "Chrome Experiments." There's been some pretty good one's and the way they have crowd-sourced the experiments is quite simply brilliant.

However, the recent experiment by Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin entitled "The Wilderness Downtown" not just takes the cake, but the whole damn bakery. This experiment combines a brilliant amalgamation of creative genius, technology and pop culture to produce an absolutely killer result. Leveraging Arcade Fire's "We Used to Wait" soundtrack off The Suburbs album, Milk+Koblin built this highly entertaining, interactive program that takes the you on a nostalgic tour of your own childhood home. As the protagonist runs through the streets, you begin to notice a conjoining screen zoom in on your old street—and if you're lucky, right down to street details. Watch how they cleverly sync the point-of-view of the street runner as they spin around with the street view of your address and how, in a grand finale, they animate a new sense of wilderness on your home street. If that's not enough, they have you send it viral before the experience is over (I selfishly kept my postcard and ended up posting it as my Facebook Profile pic).

In just one month, the site has generated over 200,000 unique visitors and over 240 referring sites. Combine that with YouTube views, impressions from Google Chrome Experiments and Arcade Fire fans, I guarantee this thing has already seen millions of unique impressions.


The Wilderness Machine 2The Wilderness Machine

 

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