artist

Despite my small fear of bugs, there's just something creepily cute about these mechanical insects by Justin Gershenson-Gates.

Gates, a self-taught tinkerer, usually sells jewelry accented with watch gears on his Web site A Mechanical Mind, but people can't seem to get enough of his occasional arthropods made from watch parts, tiny lightbulbs, and other bits and bobs.

In an e-mail interview with Crave, Gates revealed the inspiration behind these creepy designs: a recent trip featuring a freak spider encounter -- "with a leg span of about 3 inches," he says -- prompted the idea. After returning from vacation, Gates created a set of spider legs with watch-winding stems and tacked on other watch parts to create his first spider. … Read more

Artist Arena creates fan Web sites for artists including Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, and Rihanna. Calling itself "the expert in captivating fans," it also managed to gain the attention of the Federal Trade Commission after allegations were made that the firm illegally collected information about minors.

The company is a division of the Warner Music Group after being purchased by the corporation in 2010.

In a complaint filed in a New York district court on Tuesday, the FTC accused Artist Arena of failing to obtain parental consent before collecting the names and e-mail addresses of children, according to Reuters. … Read more

If you're having trouble naming that tune, just fire up SoundHound to speak, sing, hum, type, or record a song for the music-identification service to identify. It will return a song, complete with YouTube links, lyrics (when available), a list of albums on which the song has appeared, and even a link to purchase the song through Amazon. But more than just a song-identifier, SoundHound also shows you tons of information on the artist, including a bio and feeds from the artist's Facebook and Twitter accounts. It lets you bookmark tracks, and shows you lists of similar artists, … Read more

Before giant Lego trees and flowers popped up in the Australian Outback, a honking huge Lego bridge made an appearance in Germany.

Late last year, street artist Megx pulled out the primary colors to transform the underside of a bridge into an optical illusion. Clever use of color and shading makes the bridge in Wuppertal look like it's built from an interlocking set of massive Lego bricks.… Read more

It appears that Internet radio and other digital music services are starting to pay off for musicians.

SoundExchange, a nonprofit organization that collects and distributes performance royalties on behalf of artists and labels, announced today that it had distributed $1 billion in digital royalty payments to recording artists and record labels since its inception in 2000. The organization, which collects royalties from satellite radio, Internet radio, cable radio, and similar services, said it distributed more than $108 million in royalties in the first quarter of 2011 -- the first time its distributions exceeded $100 million in a quarter.

The accomplishment … Read more

I've known about Adam Audio for a long time, but for one reason or another I never reviewed one of its speakers. Adam (Advanced Dynamic Audio Monitors) may have started as a pro sound company, but it now also makes audiophile speakers. To get a handle on their sound I started with Adam's least expensive model, the ARTist 3, a compact desktop monitor. The company was founded by physicist Klaus Heinz and electrical engineer Roland Stenz, in Berlin in 1999.

It was in the early 1980s when Heinz met Oskar Heil, a decade after the good doctor caused … Read more

Paper Monsters is a polished traditional platformer with some added extras and winningly cute art and sound design.

Paper Monsters will instantly evoke other classic platformers, but in a good way: the play and interface are intuitive (a roaming virtual joystick on the left, a jump button on the right, which you tap twice to double-jump), and levels with collectible coins ("buttons"), warp pipes, enemies to jump upon, checkpoints, and lots of hidden pick-ups and paths to encourage repeat play. As the game progresses through its four chapters, with four levels each, the enemies and environments get more … Read more

Stupid Andy helps us out today with a busy rundown that includes Netflix earning first rights to new movies before cable TV; an interactive ad in the U.K. that claims it can recognize gender at a 90 percent success rate; a new Low Latency comic on Crave, and YouTube getting caught with its pants down!… Read more

Muzine is a music news app for iPad that lets you read the latest music topics in an easy-to-read format, or lets you customize your feeds to get news only from your favorite bands and sources. After launching the app, you're given a slideshow of featured stories--strangely, you can't go to a story by tapping on it, but instead need to hit the Features button to get access to full stories. Even with this oversite, the columned layout of the stories in the Featured section makes browsing for music news incredibly easy and enjoyable. A swipe upwards lets … Read more