The worlds through the windows – on Window Swap

Window Swap is a new website with a neat and complete premise: ‘open a new window somewhere in the world’. People from all sorts of mundane and exotic locales upload up to 10 minutes of footage.

This includes not only the view, but the window itself – the frame, often houseplants, sometimes pulled back curtains, etc. – to complete the illusion that the ‘window’ open on your web browser is, well, just that.

…to complete the illusion that the ‘window’ open on your web browser is, well, just that

In the Philippines, Sandy looks over cows sedately grazing in a field. Birds cheep. The clouds are huge, mountainous, and still, taking up most of the screen. A bird darts through the shot like a flickering imperfection in old film – certainly, not like something that could belong in such stillness.

For Sandy, this sight is probably so familiar as to be almost invisible. For me, this vista is a different world.

A storm is rumbling in Haar, Germany, outside Pest’s window. Faint grey clouds against a white sky. The birds here aren’t as speedy as those in the Philippines, I notice. Trees, a nondescript white building. The rain is almost imperceptible – how different it looks from the results of a rain bar in a Hollywood studio.

Copenhagen, Denmark, and Mikael’s window, which looks down on a modest outside seating area. Two white parasols packed away, chairs stacked up against a yellow wall, pink plants potted in barrels.

The birds here aren’t as speedy as those in the Philippines, I notice. Trees, a nondescript white building. The rain is almost imperceptible

Mikael has a nice, simple succulent with dinosaurish variegation sitting on his sill. The section of the road visible has a satisfying curve to it. Three cyclists go past in quick succession.

There is something calming about the whole experience – for instance, in Singapore, in Liyana’s crowded conservatory (hammock, tea pot, climbing plants, etc.) a whirring fan combines with a trickling water feature for an ASMR-ish tingle.

Yet, beyond simply calming, there is something refreshing about a platform so wilfully disinterested in what might be ‘worth’ posting about – so unlike social media, or even online art exhibitions, in which content is curated, composed to make a certain impression.

Rather, this is a space in which you aren’t expected to ‘like’ or like anything; value is flattened, in a way that is valuable in and of itself. It’s a view from a window. That’s it.

Window Swap is a constant reminder that what might seem monotonous, staid and drab to you might be solid gold to someone else

While the Window Swap website playfully states ‘fill[ing] that deep void in our wanderlust hearts’ as one of its aims, in many respects, the end-result is quite the opposite. Window Swap is a constant reminder that what might seem monotonous, staid and drab to you might be solid gold to someone else.

In the particulars of a view – that high-rise, tropical tree, or dual carriageway – as contained by a single limited frame, one discerns its rhythms and textures, the rhythm and texture of a life, of your life; indeed, of life in general.

Rather than quenched wanderlust, Window Swap is humbling; that view you’ve been stuck with day in day out during lockdown is much more interesting than you’ve come to think: through a different set of eyes, that is.

I’ll leave you with a short parable: the journalist knew he should be writing this article, but instead he found himself looking out his window at the communal garden outside his studio flat. Pink peonies, drooping orange coppertips ruffled by the wind, weeds sprouting through the cracks in the path, a rusty drain cover in the grass by a flowerbed.

…that view you’ve been stuck with during lockdown is much more interesting than you’ve come to think – through a different set of eyes

All so ordinary, and a sight the journalist had seen all too often over the previous months. Yet, though he knew he shouldn’t, he kept staring and staring, until at some point the window became a thousand windows, a million, with infinite views – a balcony in La Baule-Escoublac overlooking the calm Atlantic sea, double doors leading out to a lake in Michigan, and meanwhile in Bangkok there were telephone lines and trees and ponderous clouds.

All these views converged into a single panorama beyond the window frame with its flaking white paint, and suddenly those peonies weren’t so ordinary, after all.

You can visit Window Swap here.