Brian Eno is well-represented in iOS. His other apps like Bloom, Trope and Air invite listeners to touch the screen to make their own composition. Reflection ($30.99) is different, there is no interaction for the listener. The interface has three buttons: a pause button, a sleep timer, and AirPlay. Reflection produces endless permutations of Eno’s 2017 album, an hour and five minute long title track.
“Just calling it an app is akin to saying Falling Water is just a building,” writes one app store reviewer. “I would not call this an app,” agrees another, “Between the music and visuals it’s more like sonic architecture.” The visuals consist of slowly morphing rectangles that only seem to change in the split second you look away from the screen.
Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture provided seven guides, or 'lamps', for the troubled craftsman, guides for anyone who works directly on material things. These seven are:
The lamp of sacrifice: The willingness to do something well for its own sake.
The lamp of truth: The truth that 'breaks and rents continually'; Ruskin's embrace of difficulty, resistance, and ambiguity.
The lamp of power: Tempered power, guided standards other than blind will.
The lamp of beauty: Which for Ruskin is found more in the detail, the ornament—hand-sized beauty—than in the large design.
The lamp of life: Life equating with struggle and energy, death with deadly perfection.
The lamp of memory: The guidance provided by the time before machinery ruled.
The lamp of obedience: Obedience to the example set by a master's practice rather than by his particular works; otherwise put, strive to be like Stradivari but do not seek to copy his particular violins.