Turn Your Profile Picture into a Modern Art Masterpiece

Wish your Facebook or LinkedIn profile photo had a little more Pop?

Now, you can turn your boring old head shot into a work of modern color and shape abstraction, thanks to a new website called (earmuffs for those offended by profanity) simplify.thatsh.it.

The website, via Rhizome Today, lets you “create random modern art by simplifying images to their core elements.” In practice, this means you can upload any photo on your computer onto the website; it will read the various color information in the photo, and then it will spit out a neat, satisfying abstracted representation of that photo.

So, for example, here is my Facebook profile picture.

Jason Gilbert eating a donut
Jason Gilbert eating a donut

And here is my profile picture after being fed into the site.

Pop art created with simplify.thatsh.it
Pop art created with simplify.thatsh.it

See the resemblance? I think it captured my enormous nose well.

OK, now here’s the Facebook profile photo of David Pogue, our founding editor and lead reviewer:

David Pogue's profile picture
David Pogue's profile picture

And here is Pogue, simplified:

Pop art created with simplify.thatsh.it
Pop art created with simplify.thatsh.it

I also simplified the album cover for “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd, which was already fairly simple to begin with.

Pop art created with simplify.thatsh.it
Pop art created with simplify.thatsh.it

And here is the Mona Lisa:

Pop art created with simplify.thatsh.it
Pop art created with simplify.thatsh.it

It’s a hit-or-miss tool, obviously, though I’d argue that seeing the minimalist output of a photo redeems it every time.

Also, it’s not like this is a startup with $10 billion funding or anything. In fact, the tool came out of a collaboration between the artists Jen Lu and Tim Nolan, who were exploring the idea of simplification for a gallery show, according to the website. The two artists presented their works, and also uploaded a few example simplified photos that look amazing. Check out the Simpsons couch gag fed into the site, for example.

Pop art created with simplify.thatsh.it
Pop art created with simplify.thatsh.it

You can buy professional prints of simplified Simpsons, Mondrian, or Van Gogh on the site, too.

You probably just want to feed your face into this thing, however. You can do so here. Your Facebook friends will never recognize the new you.

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