Check out the best artistic, journalistic and musical projects that are available online with this list of 10 great Cool & Wow sites. These top 10 sites are guaranteed to be some of the coolest things you’ll see on the web in 2015.
Sites With Wow Factor
There are tons of reasons why a website could make you say “wow.” Depending on which area of the web you’ve ventured into, that reaction could be a negative reaction to something ridiculous or horrifying. Don’t worry. This list is designed to lead you to the sites that will wow you in a good way. There are innovative digital art projects, interactive websites, and intelligent promotional campaigns. Projects that took hard work and motivation to complete.
Don’t Miss Out On The Coolest Stuff On The Web
This is also a list of things that are, just in general, cool. Although there’s tons of awesome stuff on the web, it can be difficult to find without the right guidance. We created this list to point you in the right direction. Because no one with Internet access should be deprived of Kutiman’s Thru To You album or Pharrell’s 24-hour music video for “Happy.” Those things are available for free right now, all the time, whenever you want to access them. All you have to do is type in the right URL. The Internet is an amazing place.
Everything on this list is cool in its own unique way. 10 sites offering a blend of entertainment and information through interactive design. Prepare to be wowed.
Hashtag My Ass
The name Hashtag My Ass alone should be enough to have you thinking “wow.” The actual site is different than its title might suggest: it’s the host of a music video for French house musician Etinne de Crecy’s song of the same name. The video shows the artist digging through vinyl crates, with a distinct, interactive twist: the album covers are taken from your Instagram photos. You have to link your Instagram account with the site, but it’s pretty entertaining to see your own images play a role in the music video. The video also takes images from random Instagram accounts that use one of several specific hashtags. It’s a cool song with a humorous video that doubles as an interactive experience.
Seven Deadly Sins
Seven Deadly Sins is an interactive documentary that uses a combination of film and text to explore how each of the seven deadly sins plays a role in modern life. It was created by a partnership between The National Film Board of Canada and The Guardian, and it adheres to both those organizations’ high journalistic standards. All seven sins — pride, lust, greed, gluttony, envy, wrath and sloth — are examined through the lens of modern technology and the 21st century. Many notable and reputable personalities offer their opinions on the matter, exploring the ways in which technology has affected daily life. It’s an interesting project that examines the technology-driven problems and issues that we’ll face in 2015 and beyond.
Doug Aitken’s The Source
The Source, like Seven Deadly Sins, consists of a series of discussions about issues affecting people in the 21st century. The project was created by digital artist Doug Aitken, and it features his interviews with other artists (some well-known, some more obscure) about how creativity is affected or inspired by modern technology. Because of the project’s unusual subject matter and Aitken’s innovative way of exploring those topics, the content is not laid out like a typical documentary. You can explore the site and Aitken’s interviews in multiple ways, and taking your own journey through the videos is part of the overall experience.
Street Art Project
Street Art Project might be this list’s best example of coolness. It was created by the Google Cultural Institute to document and maintain an ongoing digital collection of street art from around the world. Using Google Maps technology, visitors can explore street art from around the world, zooming in on murals and graffiti that have been photographed and preserved on the site. There are tons of artists with work hosted on the site, and the ability to view pieces created at the ground level in one online, central location is awesome for anyone who appreciates street art and graffiti. It doesn’t replicate the experience of seeing a great piece of art on the street that may or may not be there the next time you walk past, but it’s definitely the closest digital equivalent.
Thru To You
Even though this will directly contradict what I just said about Google’s Street Art Project, Thru To You is probably the coolest thing on the list. It definitely has the biggest “wow” factor. The site hosts a digital album created by musician and artist Kutiman, who creates his songs by stringing together unrelated YouTube videos. He takes videos of people singing or playing various instruments — drums, bass, guitar, piano, other random sounds or instruments, etc. — and he arranges them in a way that makes it seem like they’re playing together. It’s one of the coolest ways anyone has ever created sample-based music, and the result is a well-crafted batch of songs.
Netwars
In many ways, Netwars is not cool. It basically warns us that global cyber warfare is imminent, as well as all the issues that accompany that fact. Given recent international events involving the U.S., U.K., North Korea and other countries engaging in cyber warfare, the threat only seems more and more real. Netwars is scarier than it is cool, but it’s also entertaining and informative. The project was created by German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and it features interviews with reputable voices on the topic such as NATO’s Cyber Security Chief. The way its all put together almost makes it seem like a fictional narrative, but the topics explored are definitely applicable to modern reality.
Sortie En Mer
Wow. That’s all I can really say about Sortie En Mer, an interactive online experience created by Guy Cotten. The site plays a video shot from the perspective of one of two main characters. Both are on a sailboat at sea, but the character behind the camera gets knocked into the water. That’s when things get interactive. In order to save the character from drowning, you can scroll with your mouse to stay afloat. The site keeps track of how long your character lasts, but the game always ends with you giving up scrolling and the character drowning. It’s an extremely dark and depressing promotional campaign for a clothing company, but the way it’s executed is well-done. It certainly has an emotional impact, and that’s more than most commercials offer.
Murat is project created by Motiv, a digital comic collective based in the Czech Republic. It’s one of the coolest digital comics I’ve ever seen, especially because it makes full use of web design tricks and interactive elements. It also has a distinct, black-and-white style that adds to the tone of the piece. The story centers around a “Non-Stop Bar” and the gambling that’s taking place there, but it’s told in a strange, surrealistic way. It’s worth reading through to the final scene, and the interactive elements (dragging and dropping panels, pressing a slot machine button, etc.) should keep you engaged throughout.
100 Years of Design is a celebration of a century of American design. The site was built in 2014, in honor of AIGA’s 100th anniversary. It contains a wealth of background information about that organization, as well as interviews with designers and stories about decades of American design. The way in which you explore the site is open-ended, and there’s information packed all over the place into clickable, interactive sections of the site. Reading through the different stories is like exploring a digital museum. If you think design is cool, you’ll love everything about navigating through this (well-designed) site.
If you didn’t have Pharell’s “Happy” stuck in your head at some point in the last year, you must not go out into public much. The song was everywhere, and it’s so catchy that it’s practically inescapable. Even if you’re not really a fan, you have to admit you kind of like it. Although everyone should know about “Happy” by now, you may have missed out on the incredible music video that was made to accompany it. The video has a runtime of 24 hours, and it consists of the song playing on repeat as various people and celebrities dance along in locations around Los Angeles. Depending on the time (in real life) that you visit the site, the site begins playing from the corresponding time in the 24-hour music video. You can also flip the dial and jump to any other random section throughout the day. The song never changes, but the people that show up in the video might surprise you.
