earticle

영어

Although Seoul is a capital city of South Korea with a history over 600 years, a research on its landscape is lacking. In this paper landscape is defined as an environment of both objective realities, as well as symbolically represented image. Urban information landscape includes semio-linguistic landscape, architecture landscape and media façade. Similar to cities in other East Asian countries, Seoul has the coexistence of modernity and tradition, and has experienced indiscriminate growth due to unplanned and compressed city development. In addition, the city’s chaotic disharmony, caused by a large gap between developed and underdeveloped areas, resulted in sense of difference and inconvenience of people. Those cultural and historical traces remain in the city of Seoul and the city is offering itself as a screen. Digital technologies for inscribing physical objects with text, and the associated practices of writing, distribution, and reading, created a new sort of urban information overlay. This paper aims to shed new light on Seoul as a media using empirical evidence. The landscape of urban space is not simply a matter of new information but can be extended to issue of landscape surrounding humans as well as issue of city’s identity, leading to identity of humans living in the city. Thus, the task of exploring the landscape of Seoul in the perspective of Information façade will be meaningful.