Want Your iPhone To Sound Like A Hotel Lobby Designed By Philippe Starck? There's An App for That.

We’ve seen free iPhone apps, $1,000 iPhone apps, promotional apps, pointless apps, and offensive apps. Now we have the high-concept app. This is a little like conceptual art, except that it doesn’t quite rise to that level.

One example of a concept app that just hit the iTunes Store is 24 Hours: The Starck Mix (iTunes link). It is a 24-hour soundtrack streamed to your iPhone, meant to be an audio tribute to French designer Philippe Starck. In fact, it sounds like something you might hear in the lobby of one of the trendy boutique hotels he’s helped to design, like the Clift in San Francisco or the Hudson Hotel in New York City.

The Starck Mix, which is free, will only be available for 30 days. The app shows the time, and streams ambient music and sounds, using whatever time it is where you are to determine the point in the sound loop to start streaming. There is also a Web version of the app. The app is a collaboration between Soundwalk, a New York City company which specializes in creative audio walking tours, and mobile ad agency Clicmobile. It was created for an upcoming arts festival in Paris.

I’ve been listening to the track all afternoon, and I now I really need a colorful drink that ends in “-tini.”