Eyes of the City Eyes of the City
of
the
City
By Yuhan Kim
18 A Window on the World
08 Alive
12 Memory
20
10 Lullaby
Panes & Privacy
26 When Days Get Warm
30 Day & Night
22 Windows
32 At Nihgt
04
Window: The word window originates from the Old Norse “vindauga”, from “vindr—wind” and “auga—eye”, i.e. “wind eye”. In Norwegian Nynorsk and Icelandic the Old Norse form has survived to this day (in Icelandic only as a less used synonym to gluggi), in Swedish the word vindöga remains as a term for a hole through the roof of a hut, and in the Danish language “vindue” and Norwegian Bokmål “vindu”, the direct link to “eye” is lost, just like for “window”. The Danish (but not the Bokmål) word is pronounced fairly similarly to window. Window is first recorded in the early 13th century, and originally referred to an unglazed hole in a roof. Window replaced the Old English “eagþyrl”, which literally means “eye-hole,” and “eagduru” “eye-door”. Many Germanic languages however adopted the Latin word “fenestra” to describe a window with glass, such as standard Swedish “fönster”, or German “Fenster”. The use of window in English is probably due to the Scandinavian influence on the English language by means of loan-words during the Viking Age. In English the word fenester was used as a parallel until the mid 18 th century and fenestration is still used to describe the arrangement of windows within a façade. 05
Good morning
How does your window connect you with this city?
Alive I love the sunlight from the winodw; it gives me energy to work every morning. I am a filmmaker. Light is one of the essential factors of my daily life. In morning, warm sunlight comes through the window and wakes me up when I’m still laying on the bed. I don’t want to wake up. When I have to edit my project and stay at home all day. My window is the only way I can feel I’m still alive in the world. Sunlight, rain and noises from the city. They are more truthful than a computer screen! 09
Lullaby The city comes through my window—ambulances screaming, drunks fighting, lovers talking,and radios playing. It’s the symphony of the city and each night it sings me to sleep.
Memory Sunset. The light of the opera house starts shining. Some pedestrians pass by, well-dressed. Are they going to watch the ballet performance tonight? Resting myself near the window, I am wondering what those ballet dancers are doing. The backstage should be very busy right now. I miss those days when I was a dancer. Demi-plié , passé… those beautiful memories.
13
Does someone up there?
A window is an opening in the wall of a building for the admission of light and air.
18
A Window on the World A window is a portal that connects worlds. It is also like an eye that you can open to let in the world or shut to be in your own inner world. I see my San Francisco world through the fifth stories, back alley window of my room. Every time I look out the world is little different. Rain, fog, sunshine. Every day it's a different story out my window. 19
Panes & Privacy Through the panes of window glass comes the warmth of the sun that lights my room and nourishes. Yep, my fish, who lives in a glass bowl like me, but I can pull down the shades. On Friday nights when the bar on the corner is noisy, I shut my window and pull down the shades and I am alone in the sweet stillness of my room.
Windows —Charles Baudelaire
Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers. Across the ocean of roofs I can see a middle-aged woman, her face already lined, who is forever bending over something and who never goes out. Out of her face, her dress, and her gestures, our of practically nothing at all, I have made up this woman’s story, or rather legend, and sometimes I tell it to myself and weep. If it had been and old man I could have made up his just as well. And I go to bed proud to have lived and to have suffered in some one besides myself. Perhaps you will say “Are you sure that your story is the really one?” But what does it matter what reality is outside myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am? 23
A window is a portal that connects worlds.
When Days Get Warm Even though I know summer is coming, whycan’t I feel it. In San Francisco, I can feel summer just few days per year during the fall season; otherwise , it like winter to me, cold and windy weather. Maybe because I come from tropical countries, sometimes it uncomfortable to me to live in. 27
Meow... Whereever I am I always find myself looking out the window wishing I was somewhere else.
28
Day & Night 30
I know it’s early morning when I hear the garbage truck coming down the alley below. Then comes the sounds of construction and the voices of people in the hotel across the alley. It’s morning in San Francisco, bustling with the noise of activity that echos in my ears, before the light can reach my eyes.
At night, the lights of the hotel windows shine in the dark like fireflies. I can see into the hotel room opposite from mine where a family lives. After dinner, they sit and watch television together. At Christmas they had a tree that sparkled with lights reminding me of my own family back home who I love and miss. 31
At Night Ambulances screaming, noise of helicopter, officers and pedestrians’ talking. What is happening? It seems something just happened right there at corner near my apartment. How many night do I fall in sleep with ambulances screaming or someone’s fighting? Not suprised, but scared.
32
Good night What does the view out your window look like at night?
Like many people, when I walk in a new room, the first thing I will notice is the view out a window. I think the window is a portal you can connect to the city where you are living. Can you imagine living in a room without a window? How terrible is it? I tried to shoot windows from different people’s rooms and got some perspectives—how people connect to this city in different ways. Special thanks to my friends sharing their feelings with their windows. Thanks Yoyo, Sonia, Bianca, Bei and Steve, thank you for helping me on the writing parts.
Copyright © 2012 by Yuhan Kim Su 03220100 Class: GR613 Experimental Typography Instructor: Stan Zienka Printed in USA