방문객 VISITOR

This experimental work offers a visual and typographic interpretation of the Korean poem Visitor (방문객) by Jeong Hyeon-jong (정현종), exploring the fragility and quiet magnitude of human connection.

Developed using p5.js and Adobe Illustrator, the composition translates the poem’s lyrical structure into a field of circular Hangul syllables dispersed across diagonal, meteor-like paths. The visual language evokes a meteor shower—a fleeting, celestial phenomenon that parallels the poem’s meditation on the gravity of a person’s presence.

While the poem begins legibly, the reader is soon challenged by a deliberate disruption in flow. Syllables scatter, overlap, and repeat, mimicking the cognitive experience of encountering a stranger’s emotional depth: the effort to trace meaning, to recall, and to connect. This typographic scattering invites active reading, echoing the poem’s central metaphor of a heart tracing another like the wind.

Set against a lavender backdrop, the monochrome syllables float delicately, at times colliding or fading—representing the layered and fragile nature of the self that, as the poet writes, "comes with their past and present and with their future."

This work functions not just as a visual adaptation of a poem but as an interactive reading experience, where the act of deciphering becomes part of the poetic message: welcoming someone, after all, requires attentiveness, effort, and grace.

방문객

사람이 온다는 건 실은 어마어마한 일이다. 그는 그의 과거와 현재와 그리고 그의 미래와 함께 오기 때문이다. 한 사람의 일생이 오기 때문이다. 부서지기 쉬운 그래서 부서지기도 했을 마음이 오는 것이다―그 갈피를 아마 바람은 더듬어볼 수 있을 마음, 내 마음이 그런 바람을 흉내낸다면 필경 환대가 될 것이다.

- 정현종

Visitor

A person coming is, in fact, a tremendous feat. Because they come with their past and present and with their future. Because a person’s whole life comes with them. Since it is so fragile the heart that comes along would have been broken ― a heart whose layers the wind will likely be able to trace, if my heart could mimic that wind it can become a hospitable place.

- Jeong Hyeon-jong