Talk about a contradiction in aesthetic terms: The iPhone, minimalist embodiment of no-frills design, can now house a gear-encrusted GPS app that celebrates the Victorian era's obsession with more-is-more ornamentation.
The Steampunk GPS App, designed by San Francisco visual effects artist Brian Clark, surrounds the core global positioning data with graphics that evoke polished brass and would look right at home in a movie version of a Jules Verne novel.
"I like the steampunk mechanical style and decided that the world was lacking a steampunk GPS app for the iPhone," Clark told Wired.com by e-mail. "I put together a display for all the GPS information you normally get from the iPhone."
Clark, who works at Industrial Light & Magic, called the app "basically an art project with a little bit of functionality thrown in for good measure." The app provides GPS coordinates, altitude, heading and speed info.
"Most of all, it looks cool," Clark said. "The amusement factor is hopefully in how the information is presented to the user. It has one of those old-fashioned split-leaf flipboards to display text, and a bunch of funky gauges to display numerical information."
The Steampunk GPS app can be purchased for 99 cents from the iTunes store.
Buyer beware, Clark joked: "One should not use it to navigate while piloting one's dirigible."
