Arcade Fire Knows Where You Live

When I go the Pine Point site, I can't help but think of Foucalt's piece when she talked about places reflected in a mirror and how they aren't really places at all, rather they exist in a separate reality. That's what Pine Point is. Sure, it was a real place and it existed in this reality at some point, but that's not how it is represented today. Now, the only surviving representations of Pine Point exist in its' residents memories, and on that blog site. Maybe that's for the better, after all "recollection will always be the most accurate version of that place and time." as the author says. So perhaps it is better for the former residents of Pine Point that their only interaction with their old town resides in their mind, because if it still existed, they may not look upon as fondly as they do now. Every slide has music and graphics that are on a loop, so maybe the authors sense of nostalgia comes from the idea that one day, Pine Point will become a new town for new people to call their own, and he just doesn't want to see that day come... Or maybe he just had nothing better to do with his life than make an interactive website dedicated to a town that doesn't exist anymore, who am I to say?

As for the wilderness downtown site, that was just kinda weird to see aerial views of my neighborhood spliced with a child running and computer generated trees growing on the picture. I feel the same way about this site as I do about the Pine Point one. It's not a real place, it's a representation of a real place and it exists in another reality. It is not a real place because it is displayed on my computer screen, it is merely a compilation of pixels arranged by a series of code. it lacks all of the things that make it the place it is, the feel, the smell of the air, the ambient sounds of the neighborhood etc. all those things contribute to making my street unique from other streets. Instead, it is represented with a soundtrack placed over the images, and all kinds of additional images and forces are added to this foreign representation of the street I knew as a child.