'Only You Can Silence Yourself'

Via Toxel.com.

Declare Yourself’s new ad campaign, titled 'Only You Can Silence Yourself', is aimed at encouraging young Americans to vote in the 2008 presidential election. Featuring a mix of 'real people' and young celebrities, the overall concept of the campaign is anything but subtle. The impactful, unique spots are aimed at making those who see them to stop, look, discuss, and, ultimately, become moved to participate.
































The campaign also features a website.

Can Make Music

'Red Bull Can Make Music is all about you being creative with the can, using it as your instrument to create a piece of music. Ping it, tear it, bend it, pour it, sample it, distort it...' A creativity contest that challenges students to make and build a unique piece of music using only a Red Bull can, this is a great little mini site driven by user content and interaction. Users can create their own tracks from a set of pre-saved effects or submit their own recordings. There's also the opportunity to listen back, comment and vote on other users' tracks. The deadline for submission is 13th December 2008.

Radiohead's Scrapbook

Googling to see if anyone else had something to say about this bizarre but nevertheless intruiging online scrapbook, a forum poster describes it as a 'post-modern socialist negative view of modern psuedo-capitalist society embodied through anti-art and wordplay.' Psychotic and anti-establishment, the nonsensical and random navigation, abstract quotes and doodles create a confusing but mysterious sense of adventure. See it here.

Threadless

Threadless is a community-based and community-driven t-shirt website. Ideas are submitted by users for critique and, if chosen, the designers are rewarded with $2500 and a chance for up to $10,000 more if the design is selected for print. Users can comment on t-shirt ideas whenever they want. They also have some pretty creative and interesting programs; for instance, the '12 Club' is essentially a $200 subscription to receive 1 exclusive shirt every month for a year. Whether you're just browsing tees or are a designer looking for places to submit some designs, Threadless is one of the more innovative sites that I've seen.

The Hype Machine

The Hype Machine is an MP3 blog aggregator created by Anthony Volodkin. It enables 'one-stop shopping' of postings from thousands of audioblogs. The music posted ranges from hard-to-find rarities that have not been issued in many years to more contemporary offerings and obscure remixes. There's also a radio service.

The site gives users the ability to 'make a MIXA', a fully tailored digital mix tape in the form of a cassette, with a USB connection and a capacity of 1GB. 'MIXA is like a little memory box for all your digital stuff that normally lays unloved and unseen on your super dull hard-drive. Make a holiday MIXA, a party MIXA, an ‘I love you’ MIXA, a last night MIXA or a ‘did I ever tell you I used to be a woman’ MIXA.' Cool.


















There's also a merch store featuring t-shirts, stickers and accessories. All in all The Hype Machine is a great resource for any music lover; my only reservation is that the ease and convenience of the site allows users to download music without taking in the entire experience of a music blog, such as its editorial content. Speaking of which, check out Drowned in Sound if you're after a good webzine.

Adbusters

Adbusters, a Canadian-based anti-advertising magazine working towards reversing, or at least resisting, the rise of 21st century consumer culture, creates 'un-commercials' and spoof ads and has popularised the terms 'culture jamming' and 'subvertising', practices that involve undermining existing advertisements ­ especially those promoting products in a way that aims to take advantage of an audience's insecurities. Typical examples of such spoof ads are available online here. Adbusters' works strives for the 'reversal of priorities in favour of work addressing the environmental, social and cultural crises affecting us all'. My immediate reaction to the Adbusters outlook was to think of the First Things First manifesto written by Ken Garland in 1964. In fact, the magazine republished the proposal in 2000, provoking worldwide debate over the social responsibilities of the modern designer.


















Taking a more focused look at the aforementioned concept of culture jamming reveals a movement that is as absorbing as it is refreshing; revolutionary in some respects, it 'might best be defined as media hacking, information warfare, terror-art, and guerrilla semiotics, all in one'. Culture jamming plays on the icons of consumer culture to raise awareness of issues that the perpetrator deems worthy of attention; the refiguring of logos and product images as a means of challenging current trends and attitudes produces a powerful and lasting message that is, in my opinion, very relevant. Other organisations involved in the practice of culture jamming include Subvertisers; People Like Us; Deportation Alliance; The Yes Men; Mao Dada; D.SEC; Negativland; Idiosyntactix; Billboard Liberation Front; and 'I Chuj' Action.