LONDON (REUTERS).- British painter David Hockney has embraced the new Apple iPad as a boon to art. The artist, whose most famous work is a series of pool paintings set in Los Angeles and who has experimented with iPhone photographs in his work, said the new Apple touchscreen computer tablet will have a transformative effect on art. “The iPad is many things, but one is a very useful new visual tool,” Hockney told Britain’s Times newspaper in an interview on Thursday. “There is of course a dark side to it. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see it will get thinner, perhaps even like a piece of paper, and then they might be compulsory — an iPad passport with your whole life story in it, a more sinister form of control.” The 72-year-old Yorkshireman thinks that the iPad’s ability to share images will also have profound effects, both artistically and politically. “As it empowers more