The Wilderness Downtown is an interactive film by Chris Milk. The soundtrack is the song “We Used to Wait” by the Arcade Fire from their most recent album, The Suburbs. It is dubbed a “Chrome Experiment” and must be opened in Google Chrome in order to work.
There are two reasons why I find this film, which I see more as a music video for the Arcade Fire, relevant to tweens.
The first reason is while I find the use of surveillance data available on Google Maps simultaneously fascinating and disturbing, I wonder if tweens today who are inundated with so much digital and internet technology that allows for so much sharing to take place, would find this film normal in terms of the culture they live in today.
The second reason is that when it came time to write a postcard to my formal self, I automatically began to write a note to my formal tween self. Subconsciously, I knew that if I could really send a postcard back in time, that it would be my tween self who would need it most, who would enjoy the whimsy of receiving mail from the future the most, and who would be teetering on the verge of child and teen, a place where I would still believe that such magical things might be possible, while simultaneously appreciating the gift. I wonder if other people sent postcards to their tween selves as well.
I think this could be a fun experience for older tweens, maybe in the eighth grade. They could write postcards to their younger tween selves.
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