art

Chances are you're not going to match the influence over the art world that Andy Warhol did with his pop-art pictures of Campbell's soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, but at least you can have some of the fun.

BigHugeLabs has added a "Warholizer" tool that lets you upload a photo or modify one hosted at Flickr or Photobucket so it becomes a tribute to Warhol's bright, posterized art.

BigHugeLabs already offers a large collection of entertaining photo-effect tools. Along with the Warholizer, my favorites include the mock motivational poster maker, the ID badge maker, the … Read more

Getty Images, a major seller of stock photos and other licensed media, confirmed on Tuesday a New York Times report that it's for sale.

Or at least that its board is "exploring strategic alternatives to enhance shareholder value," according to a company statement.

The company didn't comment on the Times' report that the most interested buyers were private-equity firms such as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Bain Capital, or that its price could go as high as $1.5 billion.

Getty hired Goldman Sachs as financial adviser and Weil Gotshal & Manges as legal adviser, the Seattle-based … Read more

If all you wanted was a phone to connect you with someone, you wouldn't be reading this blog.

The Nokia Arte begs to be looked at as a work of art, a cell with sculptured style. Does it succeed in that quest? Absolutely.

Looking at the Arte, you notice the solid statement it's trying to make. It's modern. It's cutting edge. It's quite heavy, but that seems to be part of its appeal. That heft comes from genuine materials: glass and metal. Heretical approach in these plastic times.

Open it up and there's a … Read more

Earlier this week, I ran a story about how video game giant Electronic Arts plans to release its much-anticipated evolution game, Spore, on Macs at the same time as the PC version.

Unfortunately, at the time of the story, I didn't have any screenshots of the game being played on a Mac, and in fact, we had to rely on out-of-date images of Spore taken from game conferences in 2006.

Well, today, I finally was able to make onto the show floor at Macworld here in San Francisco, and while I was certainly interested in much of what was … Read more

This post has been updated to confirm when we should expect an official announcement from EA.

As has been anticipated, Electronic Arts is set to announce Tuesday that it will be bringing its highly anticipated game Spore to the Mac sometime in 2008. It's a big deal, because PC and Mac versions of a game are often released months apart, if at all--some major game manufacturers skip the Mac platform altogether because they simply don't see the market value. EA, however, plans to bring Spore to both platforms simultaneously.

The announcement has been timed in conjunction with--you guessed … Read more

I'm holding a ticket to Baghdad in my hand. I just booked the flight at a kiosk in a storefront travel agency in San Francisco's hipster heart, the Mission District.

From speakers in the room, a woman's soothing voice calls out some of the highlights there, like restaurants that are never crowded. Televisions spell out more urgent tips for travelers: "No skirts. No photos. No children."

Brochures in English, Spanish, and Arabic provide more details: "All the beautiful places that you might have read about have either been destroyed or looted."

The boarding … Read more

Peter Terren's got a Tesla coil, and he's not afraid to use it... a lot. A physician by trade, the Australian's driving forward the emerging expressive medium of large-scale interactive electric-spark art.

Yep, he makes huge synthetic lightning sculpture, some of which you can stand in without dying. Watch as he hops into a pool full of electricity. Marvel at his recreation of the video game Command and Conquer. We're not sure we'd risk a crispy high-voltage death for the sake of art, but are delighted that he's convinced it's safe.

Learn more … Read more

NICASIO, Calif.--Search for sounds tagged with the word "funny" in Skywalker Sound's library of more than 120,000 effects, and you get precisely 510 results.

Among them are "animal cow," eight different forms of "human hiccup," six forms of "tuba comedy," and many, many more.

It's vital that the sound design and post-production arm of George Lucas' Lucasfilm empire has such a massive proprietary database of sounds. Its sound designers are tasked with coming up with just the right effects to create things like "rat (point of view)&… Read more

This is apparently how to market a hard drive in today's computer peripherals market: Hire a French designer, put his name on a black box, and add a strip of blue light to it. Voila! Another work of art.

That's what LaCie has done with the latest of its designer collection, following the "Little Disk" by Sam Hecht and the "Golden Disk" by Ora-Ito. The new LED-adorned offering apparently foregoes a unique name, going simply by "LaCie Hard Disk" by Neil Poulton and offered in sizes ranging from 320GB to 1TB. (The … Read more