On February 10th, 42 Entertainment and Nine Inch Nails launched the ambitious Year Zero project, a work of cross-media art involving websites, emails, phone calls, album packaging, tour t-shirts, thumb drives, murals and live events with the songs of Year Zero at their core. Playing out over 12 weeks leading up to the album release, Year Zero is arguably the most complete and compelling web-based piece of art yet created. Year Zero has become an internet phenomenon as well as a dynamic album, changing the way people think about the futureóand the way they act today. By making Year Zero not just an album you listen to, but a place where you live, as the LA Times points out, Nine Inch Nails ìunlocks the rusty cages of the music industry and solves some key problems facing rock music as its cultural dominance dissolves into dust.î



It started with a message hidden in the back of a concert tour t-shirt that spelled ìI am trying to believe.î The message led to a website claiming the government was drugging our water supply to keep us sedatedófor our own good. A hidden phone number in a leaked single off the album that was left on a thumb drive in the venueís restroom led to a Another Version of the Truth, home for an underground resistance movement fighting against an America ruled by an unholy alliance of the religious right, their allies in government, and multinational corporations.



42 Entertainmentís distributed narrative was told on multiple platforms, but the real connection with the audience came through a modern day resistance site established to fight against the vision of the future being uncovered. This movement centered around the theme ìArt is Resistanceî and allowed the community to have their voice heard by expressing their views creatively. The music of Nine Inch Nailsódesperate, angry, sexy and hauntingówas at the center. The alternate reality experience became a work of art, a warning, and a call to action that went beyond the edge of the audienceís CD player and onto the web. Year Zero: an all too plausible vision of a world on the edge of collapseóand convulsed by the appearance of the Presence. Nobody knows what it is. Everybody feels what it means. Over 3M participated.