Arcade Fire - The Wilderness Downtown Chrome Experiment - A Cool Personalised Music Video

The Wilderness Downtown by Arcade Fire is a lovely Chrome Experiment (so you will need to be using an up-to-date Chrome browser – probably – I can’t be bothered trying it using any of the others.  You should be using it anyway.  It is the best.) 

The first thing you are asked to do is to enter the address of the house that you grew up in.  It will use this address along with Streetview, some cool animations and videos and lots of windows, to create your own personalised music video.

here

The video in action

RecordTripping - Abstract Mouse Wheel Fun and Games

Record tripping is an extremely well designed and original game by the Bell Brothers who have a penchant for picture frames. It is also a very deserving winner of both a Webby Award and an FWA Site of the Day.

The idea of the game is to use your mouse wheel to manipulate a variety of devices including a safe, a clock and a windmill in order to affect displayed scene.

To make this cleaer, take a look at the following:

Here you spin the windmill clockwise or anti-clockwise to affect the air current so as to blast a falling seed with the object of landing it into a receptacle of earth, whence forth a lovely flower sprouts.

Also:

On this level you must spin the dial on the safe in the correct direction until it clicks into place. When you complete the relevant number of clicks, the safe pops open.

This is all accompanied to either the default Alice in Wonderland track or to another track that you can download, the sound being scratched by your mouse wheel jiggery.

I know it all sounds a little strange, but it is quite good fun for ten minutes or so.

Grotrian Piano Toy - Crazy experimental piano toy - give it a try

Grotrian Pianos is a very groovy musical toy – and a little bit crazy at that. You start off by choosing your composition. There are 4 to try…Beethoven, Satie and Loh and their own mad piece (the game is made by an old skool piano making company). Once you have chosen then the fun begins.

You are given an abstract board of moving squares that allow you to manipulate the tune in lots of trippy ways. It is a little hard to describe with no musical vocabulary, but you basically move the squares around in different ways to distort the composition to your liking. You can also choose the tone, rhythm and tempo of your masterpiece.

Just like many of the toys featured on this site, it is difficult to explain….you need to experience it.

Give it a try here