January 17, 2023 • 38 mins
Nature abhors a vacuum… and so do we? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the subject of horror vacui as it relates to philosophy, physics and the arts.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
today we're gonna be starting up a series on the
subject of horror vakui, which can be translated directly as
(00:26):
fear of the void, but has also been paraphrased in
the form of the statement nature of horrors of vacuum. Now,
I think this is gonna be a great subject for us,
because this principle has facets that appear in art, psychology,
and all kinds of other domains. But it's often traced
all the way back in its origin to the scientific
(00:46):
writings of Aristotle in the fourth century b CE. Though
Aristotle did not use exactly this phrase, of course, how
could he. It's latin um. But he did argue in
his book on Physics that the con incept of a
vacuum in nature was implausible and in fact even worthy
of ridicule. Uh So this occurs in Aristotle's famous Physics.
(01:10):
This is book for part eight, though his attempted refutation
of vacuum physics spans several sections. I think it's like
parts six through nine of the book or so. And
it's interesting that Aristotle does not approach this subject from
kind of from first principles, but instead he approaches it
by entering an ongoing debate among other philosophers where there's
(01:33):
a camp arguing against the existence of empty space, and
that apparently contains figures like Anexagoras, and then there's a
camp that argues for the existence of empty space, and
that contains the Pythagorean school and others. So, in trying
to stake his own claim in this controversy, Aristotle makes
the argument that the existence of empty space is logically incoherent,
(01:56):
and this leads to a harsh joke at the expense
of space it's self. He writes, but even if we
consider it on its own merits, the so called vacuum
will be found to be really vacuous. Huh. That might
be funny or in ancient Greek. I'm not sure. So.
I think we'll come back specifically to the history of
horror vakay in physics in a subsequent part in this series.
(02:21):
But I thought this was a good place to start
because a lot of people seem to trace this general
idea back to Aristotle, and they often identify him as
sort of the grandfather of this tradition of being intolerant
of empty space or of the very idea of emptiness. Yeah,
and just the whole idea that nature of whore is
(02:42):
a vacuum like it's you could you could also kind
of translated as, hey, anytime there's a place where stuff
isn't but stuff could be, well, guess where you're gonna
eventually find stuff right there? Um, And you know, you could.
You can apply that to economics, you can apply it
to evolution. Um, because for the most part, like various
interpretations of that hold very true. Yeah. And of course
(03:05):
there are tons of examples, uh, in in physics where
you can identify the sort of phenomenonomy if, for example, uh,
interpy particle entropy. If you take a rectangular container and
half of it is filled with gas and the other
half has no gas in it, Uh, if you just
like let it go on its own and do nothing
to it, eventually the gas will even out in distribution
(03:26):
and fill the entire container. That something about nature seems
to reject that that arbitrary starting point of division and
interpete tends to just have everything spread out even out
it doesn't want to let that emptiness remain. Yeah, or
um on the other end of the spectrum, if you
have an empty drawer or cabinet in your kitchen, um,
(03:50):
see how long that lasts. Because eventually, eventually something's gonna
come along and it's going to be the perfect place
to stick it. Right. But one big place where where
horror akui has been recognized throughout the years is in
the world of art, that's right. Yeah, And in this
we get into you have this softer treatment of the
vacuum of empty spaces and also a lot of I
(04:13):
think ultimately discussions are arguments over like what what constitutes
an empty space and so forth. But um, yeah, and
within the worlds of art and design, horror vacuate basically
comes down to a tendency to fill blank spaces instead
of leaving them empty. I've also seen it argued as
a kind of maximalism opposing minimalism. So you know, it's
(04:38):
like like I'm gonna I'm gonna create this painting or look,
you know, think of it. I guess from like like
a street art graffiti kind of standpoint, What am I
going to paint on this wall? And how much of
this wall am I going to paint? Well, I'm going
to paint all of it, and I'm gonna fill it
with with just so many things? Or are you is
it going to be mostly sort of a blank canvas
drawing your attention to the one I a songbird that
(05:01):
you've created at the middle of this uh street campus. Yeah. Now,
for for my own part, and I imagine everyone out
there has some version of this, But for my own part,
my mind quickly goes to a few different handy examples.
Some of my favorite artists do seem to abhor the
vacuum on some level. For instance, I've I've long been
a fan of the dark surrealism of of Irving Norman,
(05:24):
and his work tended to consist of very complex, crowded,
dynamic expanses that had a lot of like urban and
industrial energy to them, um and and and so. It
has a lot of chaos, it has a lot of
soul listeness, and a lot of it is about sort
of capturing the spirit as he saw it of the
modern world. Oh, that's interesting that the connection to modernity,
(05:47):
because I think a lot of people over the years
have made this argument that something about how how culture
changes over time. Maybe a lot of this is driven
by technology results in the constant sort of ingress of
stuff into more and more uh previously unfilled spaces of
(06:07):
your your attentional life. So whereas life used to, at
least according to this argument, involve a lot more kind
of boredom and idleness and sort of sitting around with
your own thoughts, not having anything to do and and
things like that. Uh, now there's just like always something
to occupy you and occupy your attention. Yeah, and his
(06:29):
works in particular, they do have this feeling to them. Um.
The one I included for you to look at here,
and certainly listeners can look this piece up as well.
This is war and Peace. It's a triptych. And this
is a piece that I've gotten to see in person
that was on display in San Francisco at least for
a while. Big piece, and a piece like this is
great to see in person as well, because you get
(06:50):
to sort of get a little closer and check out
some of the many details that make it up. For instance,
one of the pieces here, you see all these buildings
and it like a a realistic view of skyscrapers in
each little window has somebody inside with like some sort
of paint or horrific or board expression on their face. Um.
(07:11):
So yeah, he he really seems to fill every available
space with some sort of detail. Mm hmm. Now they're
plently of older artists that come to mind. Uh, you know,
pre modern artist like Hieronymous Bosh comes to mind. Peter Brugal,
the Elder Um. Another contemporary example that I instantly think
of would be the visionary art of of Alex Gray.
(07:33):
You know, very psychedelic but also just filled with flow
and color, and there's just this sense of every available
space has been sort of engulfed by uh, energies that
cannot normally be viewed with the naked eye. Yeah. Now
you you raise Hieronymous Bosh, and that really got my
gears cranking because when it comes to horror Vakawy and Bosh.
(07:56):
I could be wrong, but I sense a trend in
his religious paintings where there's an association of business with
bad things, with chaos and sin, whereas empty space seems
to be more associated with order and godliness and righteousness.
(08:16):
So you know, hell is bustling and full and just
teeming with activity, whereas heaven or maybe the Garden of
Eden before the Fall is orderly and clean and has
plenty of empty space, plenty floor space. One example, of course,
I think of here is the Triptic The Last Judgment,
where if you see, you know, the Garden of Eden,
(08:37):
apparently a a time before sin, there's just a lot
of kind of empty ground, is like not a lot
going on. There's there's plenty of expanses that have yet
to be filled with anything. And also if you look
at the middle panel of the Triptic, there is war
and chaos and suffering and disease and violence and stuff
taking place down on Earth, and it's a very busy seen.
(09:00):
But up above you see Christ and the angels and
everything is very clean, and there's like not a whole
lot going on. There's a lot of empty space up
in the sky. Yeah, this is a great point. So
in a way, I wonder if that's kind of an
inverse horror vakawee where you know that that, like the
the vakawi is actually the indicator of goodness and orderliness,
and and you know, when there's too much stuff going on,
(09:21):
that's a sign that something has gone wrong, that that
order has broken down. But clearly this is not a
universal association within art or even within religious art. For example,
Dante's Paradiso seems to be anything but empty. You know,
the heavens in that vision are crammed with overwhelming, incomprehensibly
(09:42):
busy stimuli. There's you know, a lot of things where
He's just like, there was so much I couldn't understand
what I was looking at. Um. And in some versions
of gnosticism also the sort of ultimate ideal plane of
reality and the sum of all divine potential is called
the clear roma, which in Greek means fullness, the opposite
(10:03):
of emptiness or void, your example of here from the
last judgment, this this made me think about okay, and
at least in the middle part of it, you're talking about,
you know, here we have a Christ appearing in the
sky and everything is a little more open, and we
see the blue and ultimately the white of of naked
sky there. And I was comparing this to some other
(10:26):
words that I'll mention a second. But it made me wonder, like,
when is the sky full and when is the sky empty? Um?
Because it seems like on some level a blue or
white sky in a painting is certainly a different animal
compared to say, a red sky, in the same way
that the standard wall color for a museum is usually,
at least today not black or red, but a nice
(10:47):
white or a muted gray. But on the other hand,
like a night sky is not necessarily like the darkness
of space is not necessarily understood to be uh full,
but I guess it could be depending on how you're looking.
It's certainly full of stars. Yeah, and specifically, I mean
the skies are, yeah, they're They're rendered in very different ways.
(11:08):
I mean sometimes the stars themselves are very busy. I
think of, I guess this is obvious to go to.
But the starry night yeah, yeah. Uh. And as as
far as Dante goes, I I instantly thought back to
Gustav dres Later so much later illustrations of the Divine Comedy.
And sometimes those do and sometimes they don't match up
(11:28):
with this general idea. Like there's one particularly famous image
from Dore's illustrations where we see um let's let see
um Dante and his his guy. Who's this guy in Paradisio.
It's uh in the Paradiso It's it's Beatrice. It's Beatrix. Yes,
that's right. So it's it's Dante and Beatrice, and here
in front of them is just this incomprehensible. Uh. It's
(11:51):
almost like the eye of Sauron with with just multitudes
of swirling angelic beings all around it. Yeah, it's all
you're looking into, just a tunnel made of like nanotechnology,
except it's it's all angel wings. Yeah. And then there's
another one of Dora's illustrations where we see Dante and
(12:11):
b standing here on a cloud and we see multiple
rings of angels, And certainly there are a lot of
angels in each ring, but there's a lot more open space,
particularly above them, and there's an openness to that image
that you don't see in a lot of the Doray
illustrations of any of the three realms of the Divine Comedy. Agreed,
(12:31):
And so that that division, uh seems to be a
you know, whether you want to represent beauty and holiness
as as a kind of incredibly busy phenomenon or as
something with a lot of empty space in it. I
don't see an overwhelming trend one way or the other.
I mean, it seems like a sort of a pretty
evenly divided issue of preference, because I think of tons
(12:53):
of paintings from all throughout history and all throughout different
cultures where empty space is clearly the thing that makes
the painting so beautiful or the art so beautiful. One
that came to my mind while we were getting ready
for this episode was there's a Chinese work of art
from I think the thirteenth century called on a Mountain
(13:13):
Path in Spring by Ma Yuan. Do you know that one?
Rob I have just pulled it up in front of me. Oh, yeah,
this is beautiful, and I'm not familiar with this piece. Yeah.
One thing I really like about it, so to try
to describe it, shows like a man on a path
and there are sort of like some trees drooping over
around him, and there's a bird in flight up ahead
of him. Uh, and you see the ridges of some
(13:36):
mountains in in the background in one half of the painting.
But one thing I really love about this painting is
that essentially only half of it is filled in. So
behind the man you see the outlines of all these forms.
There are tree trunks, and uh, there's the path. You
see a little you know, ridges and indentations in the
ground and tree roots and shrubs, and you see the
(13:57):
mountains in the background, and then in the they're half
of the painting. Essentially all the forms just disappear and
it's almost entirely empty space except for a little suggestion
of the path continuing along on the ground and a bird.
Mm hmmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's a beautiful piece, you know.
And I also want to mention that many of the
(14:18):
artists that one might point to and say, Okay, this
is someone who definitely abhors the vacuum. Uh, they're they're
definitely a maximalist. You can also find plenty of examples
where they play with opening things up a little bit,
like even just uh, looking back through some of Irving
Norman's works, like, there are of some pieces where you
have fairly sizeable expanses of say sky, sometimes blue sky,
(14:39):
other times extremely blood red skies, but sky. Nonetheless, I
don't know what this is. So my my ruined, vulgar
mind looks at one of these paintings, the one with
the red sky, and I just think hell razor too. Yeah,
I mean, it is a it is a hellish image.
M have some of those vibes to it, for sure.
(15:02):
I think it's that the red sky and then the
sort of like maze of walls beneath that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
this one is called war Wounded Ends. That's another one
of my favorite pieces by Irving Norman. It is beautiful.
I apologize for the Barker comparison. No, no, no, I
mean I think it's happening. Thank, thank thank. I mentioned
(15:29):
the walls of of a museum earlier because I think
this is also key as well, because when you think
of gallery walls and even picture frames in a modern sense,
and we tend to think of a very minimalist um features, right.
The trend nowadays at least is, of course, the display
works of art in unassuming frames on largely blank walls,
(15:52):
with at least some amount of space between each work,
sort of give allow each work a little room to breathe.
But this was of course not always the fashion, and
isn't always the fashion. Maximalist and minimalist approaches are just
trends and ensure that the complex wallpaper may be pulled
away in the geometric wall to wall carpeting, maybe ripped
(16:13):
up from space, but given enough time, these things may
come back into fashion again and you'll get even crazier
wallpaper plastered back up and even more complex carpet installed
wall to wall. But there are some interesting properties involved,
like what does it do when you have something worth
looking at in the midst of white space? Uh? You know,
(16:33):
what does emptiness? What does the void do? And there's
an offsided quote from art historian Ernst Gombric of nineteen nine,
two thousand and one uh, in which he stated, quote,
the richer the elements of the frame, the more the
center will gain in dignity. I believe this is a
part of his theory of perception, and I think I
(16:54):
think it's a pretty insightful statement, and we can we
can apply it to the blank walls behind a canvas,
to the assuming picture frame, or even elements within a
given work where the busy aspects of a piece focus
our attention towards something more open, like for instance, Christ
floating in the sky above. Uh, this otherwise chaotic scene
(17:15):
and painting by Bosh. Oh, that's kind of interesting. So
that might explain the popularity of these very ornate, highly
textured you know, frames around paintings with all these ridges
and swirls and so forth. Yeah, and certainly you will
you will often encounter, even in modern museums, sometimes these
older pieces that are still in very ornate frames. And
(17:37):
I'm always interested in that because, I guess because it
kind of throws me for a curve comparing it to
more modern works and modern framing. UM. And then you'll
encounter this piece that has some sort of picture frame
that I mean could arguably be seen as distracting from
the piece itself, but but maybe not maybe guiding you
in now. As far as the term horror vacuie goes,
(18:00):
depending on tastes and trends, you'll see it in the
art world, sometimes invoked as praise, other times invoked as criticism. UM.
Take the the often dizzy art of Jackson Pollock of
nineteen twelve through nineteen fifty six. UM. It's kind of
a prime example of this duality. Even though not all
of his works abhore the vacuum, you'll find you'll find
(18:22):
a little space in some of his pieces, and I
think maybe those are the ones that I I may
be a little more drawn to. Oh, but you mean that,
Like critics have described it in terms of horror vakay
both positively and negatively, like this is good because it
sates my horror vakawee, or this is bad because it's
just a product of horror Vaki. Yeah, yeah, and I
(18:44):
think and I think in the case of of of Pollock,
and people are more familiar with art criticism out there
that make and can chime in on this. But it
seems like you see it invoked more as a criticism,
you know, almost like, well, there's clearly this artist is
afraid of the vacuum. Other Wise they would have given
us a little more space. But I don't know, even
the really busy Jackson polite pieces, which which I think
(19:06):
I have also had the chance to see in person,
some of these pieces like they really need to see
in person, because you do get it's a similar situation.
You can take it all in, but you can step
a little closer and sort of look at just some
of the closer details, and it's really enthralling. Now. The
term has also been used to describe cultural artistic traditions.
I've seen it used to describe the work of the
(19:28):
ancient Egyptians, as well as the trend in Islamic art
towards the expansive use of geometric patterns. Apparently, however, the
originator of the term in art criticism itself was Italian
born art and literature critic Mario praz Who of eighteen
ninety six through two, who used it mostly to slam
(19:50):
the cluttered visual interior design one sees particularly of in
Victorian households. Victorian design. Uh Joe I included a uh
sort of stereotypical image of a victor, of a rich
Victorian sitting room here, and I think it raises the
question is this too busy? Or is this just comfy?
(20:11):
Is this? Is this like hoarded fancy items? Or is
this somebody who want to do surround themselves with the
things they like and sort of warm themselves in the
glow of those things. So so the critical idea here
could be, yeah, like is there too much patterned wallpaper,
too much patterned upholstery on the furniture, too many little
(20:31):
do d ads all over the place. It's just the
room is too busy. You should live in a roth coo. Yeah.
And I guess one of the things that really comes
out and thinking about in terms of art is, of course,
art criticism is generally highly subjective, and so also is
the the use of a term like horror of vacuie
(20:51):
in terms of of art and design, or any kind
of creative endeavor and uh in film is not immune
to this. Um. I was really excited by this because
I was looking around for I don't think I was
even particularly looking for something about film, but I ran
across discussion of horror vacuie in Jollo films. Yes, Vangoria Magazines.
(21:13):
Alexandra Helen Nicholas has written film criticism discussing the subject
of horror vacuie in Jollo films. The book in question,
which I haven't had time to read in full yet,
but what I've read so far is is quite good.
It's the Jollo canvas art excess and horror cinema shallow
is absolutely a genre of excess, and that is part
(21:37):
of what makes it so enticing. Is it's just unrestrained
expressiveness and gaudiness. Yeah, yeah, it's Um, it's this of course,
largely we're dealing with the tag in cinema here, though
though it's influence becomes such that it spills out into
European cinema in general and also has a big influence
on the global slasher genre. Uh yeah, it's generally stylish
(22:01):
to some degree gratuitous. Uh you know, it's flashy and
uh so Hella Nicholas here points out that naturally, uh
horror vacaie doesn't just apply to highbrow art. She cites
the illustrations of Robert Crumb as an example, and then
points to a couple of other horror cinema examples possible
examples such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Uh, particularly than the
(22:26):
original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Particularly I believe she was pointing out, uh,
these some of these early scenes where we're not even
getting into the blood and the excess um, but just
like scenes where the the inside of the Chainsaw Massacre
household is just cluttered with all sorts of of you know,
uncanny items like skulls and bird bones and knickknacks. And
(22:48):
she also points to some other examples where there's like
just where it's a similar situation where a lot of
disturbing stuff sort of thrown at you so fast and
and and you don't general rule in in the horror,
you know, don't don't show the monster too long, don't
show the gore effect too long, and it can kind
of overpower you like, overpowers the circuits with unease or revulsion.
(23:10):
But to read a quick quote here quote in Jallo cinema.
While certainly not lacking in moments of excessive blood and guts,
excessive nudity, etcetera, it is also just as much frequently
marked by an excess of style through color, music, nis
on sin and even performance styles. These films, too, are
(23:33):
marked by a sense of too muchness, an excess we
can loosely align with this tradition of horror vacoe. That
is an excellent description of Jalo and what makes it
so special that the core stylistic feature of it is
too muchness. It's just a lot in every possible way. Yeah,
(23:54):
And I don't know about you, but even just thinking
about this made me think of various stills from any
Seven Suspiria by a Dario Argento where there's just there's
a lot of too muchness in in the film, even
the shots that are not bloody shots. There are several
really bloody shots that are just overpowering the senses. But
also other scenes that have like a Mario Bava hyper
(24:18):
color realm sensibility to it, or just like a lot
of a lot of lines and shapes thrown at you. Yeah,
a lot of interior designs. Wall. I don't know if
it's wallpaper, but painted walls with busy designs, you know,
just fixtures and artworks and just stuff everywhere. It is
not a minimalist looking film. Yeah. Now, now speaking of film,
(24:41):
I also and looking at all this, I couldn't help
but think of movie posters as well. Uh, sort of
the difference between it and an exciting pact maximalist a
movie poster versus the minimalist movie poster, which was certainly
a design trend not too long ago, maybe in the
last ten years. And I guess there's still a lot
(25:02):
of it going on, maybe not at the professional level,
but sort of as a design exercise and art exercise
among other folks. Yeah. Like like you know, I think
of posters by American artist Drew Strussan, who did uh
poster art for Blade Runner, various Star Wars films, also
the N seven Killer Worm movie Squirm. Uh. These are
(25:28):
all three poster examples, and you can look these up
where there's just a lot packed into the image. They're
they're beautiful and they seem to overflow with the energy
of those films, be at the drama, the sort of
neon intrigue of something like like Blade Runner, or just
the monstrous squirminess of squirm. Yeah, well, there's a lot
(25:48):
of actors heads, so they're trying to pack actual marketing
information into the painting. You're gonna see here here all
the actors that you know and love that are going
to get you into the theater. But also they're trying
to give you some information about the plot, so you
will see like moments or scenes from the movie in
the poster. But then also, yeah, like you say, they're
trying to suggest the uh, I don't know, the kind
(26:11):
of like throbbing energy of the movie. Like the horror
ones are going to have a kind of a squirm
nous to them, you know, kind of like a kind
of queasy light coming off of them, whereas the the
sci fi action movies have this glow as if from
stars in the background or something. Yeah, and with something
like squirm, they're they're they're not really any big name
(26:33):
actors in that. You're not trying to market it that way,
so you pull back on the the identifiable faces and
heads and you just focus on the squirm nous of
the picture. Now, I really did enjoy a lot of
those recent redesigns of classic movie posters, but in minimalist form. Though,
I think that works a lot better for movies that
people already know and love than it does for movies
(26:57):
that nobody's ever seen before. Like when when you're advertising
a movie and you're trying to like catch people's eye
and make them see it, that seems like when you
really do actually want to try to cram a bunch
of stuff into the poster to like cast a lot
of lines essentially like oh do you like this actor?
Their faces on there somewhere. Yeah. Like I was looking
around for minimal examples of all three of these films
(27:18):
that I just mentioned. I found that, you know, there
are a lot of them that have been created for
Blade Runner in the Star Wars films. But I found
an episode three poster for Star Wars and they did
the smart thing of basically invoking the shape of Darth
Vader's head. Like, that's an that's an easy one. You
can go super minimalist on that because it's a very
identifiable character outline. Yes, totally. I really like this one
(27:42):
for Blade Runner that is just a yellow background with
a black sort of minimalist geometric rendering of the Origami unicorn. Yeah,
it's a it's more of I think, maybe on the
cute level, where it's like, oh, okay, I see what
they were going. Oh yeah, that's right, that's from the movie,
a little detail and kind of a wink to folks
who remember it. But I also found, surprisingly, and I
(28:05):
got this off of the Telltale mind dot com. They
have a blog both there where it's Squirm nineteen seventy six,
Sorry I got I may have gotten that the year
wrong and scoring there, but Scorm nineteen seventy six the
visuals where they have a whole bunch of promotional visuals
from the film and a lot of it's very squirmy.
Um there was one one particular international uh poster or
(28:27):
one sheet or or or lobby card here this just
absolutely loaded with worm images. But then there is strangely
a single one that that has just the words squirm
with kind of an interesting font. I guess that looks
like maybe it was written by a worm that had
been dipped in ink and it just says scorned. The
monster is seventy six in cursive, yeah in in in
(28:49):
worm curson. If I guess, like I said, I think
a worm maybe is supposed to have made that s
so I don't know all of this is subjective again,
but it it does make you think about you know what, well,
what the difference is between cranking it up and pulling
back on it. And certainly when it comes to the
use of empty spaces or perceived empty spaces and visual
design than now. I also think it's very interesting to
(29:20):
think about this concept in UM so called visionary art
and psychedelic art and then also psychedelic cinema UM, because
you know, think of either of these categories and you
often think of dizziness. While the psychedelic experience itself, of
course is going to vary greatly. There is often a
description of images and ideas filling the blank or the empty.
(29:41):
Things that don't have meaning take on heightened meaning. UM
surfaces crawl, move and breathe, And from an AI perspective,
I suppose the now sort of out of fashion al
I don't hear as much about it. A Google Deep
dream kind of created a version of this with its
tendency to find dog faces in every thing. So any
given image, any even like a blank background, would suddenly
(30:05):
become faintly alive with intertwined cute dog faces. Yeah, like
you take a picture of a lawnmower and the you know,
the starter button is a pug's face, and the uh
and the and the wheels will become little gold nurch
reever is. It's cute. Yeah, but it makes me think
too about just the human tendency to define patterns and
(30:27):
to fill emptiness with meaning and things. Even in the
case of deprivation, you know, some sort of sensory deprivation
scenario or some sort of isolation scenario, the mind eventually
starts finding details where they are not details, you know,
sometimes to harmful degrees. M And there there are a
(30:47):
lot of treatments of this too in in in various
papers I was running across. You know, you get into
whole discussions of say, marketing, Um, how do you fill
your show window at at a at a at a
fancy of fashion store or a clothing store. Do you
just fill it up with the various items you're you're selling? Um?
And you certainly see this approach in some shop store windows.
(31:09):
Or do you have like that one piece and lots
of blank space, open space, or maybe you know a
few splashes of color. Uh. You know, there are arguments
to be made for both sides. They are also a
very specific arguments about what kind of clientele are being
attracted to this store window versus another. Well, yeah, and
that's interesting because it brings us to I would say
(31:32):
that there is a fairly consistent thread of class association
with maximalist versus minimalist design um, which is that minimalist
designs are more often associated with wealth. Yeah. I think
one classic example of that is, of course, the the
upscale dinner plate versus the I don't know, the comfort
(31:54):
food dinner plate. The comfort food dinner plates they filled
from an all you can eat buffet. Uh June only
is a is a pretty pretty loaded dish. There's not
a lot of white space remaining on that dish. Meanwhile,
what do you think of when you think of of
true upscale dining? What do you think of when you
think of, say, the recent film The Menu, which is uh,
(32:18):
you know, very much a send up in parody of
the high dining experience in the business and culture surrounding it.
You think of a whole bunch of of of empty
plate and like maybe like a few piles or puddings
or some sort of very interesting plating of the dish
that doesn't take up too much real estate. Yeah, you
will see a lot of plate. This also made me
(32:40):
think about something that anybody out there has any any
dealings with newspaper pagination or I guess design in general,
any kind of like design and layout, and that is
the subject of of not only white space, but trapped
white space. For those of you unaware that the general
rule has long been when it comes to a newspaper page,
(33:03):
there doesn't have to be an endless cascade of text
and images taking up every space on the page. You
can have some white space in there, you know, give
your features and your images and your text a little
room to breathe. But while you can have white space,
you do not want to have trapped white space. So
you can think of it this way, like your your
(33:24):
text and your images, this is all one continent or island.
And it's okay to have inlets and harbors, uh that
have white in them, that you know, that are accessible
to the outer void. But you don't want lakes and
pools of trapped white space within the piece. And you know,
I think it's tempting from either side, if you're inside
(33:45):
the world of pagination and design or outside of it too.
On some level wonder, well, this is really makes sense
or is this just a standard? This is just this
is just what they have told us to do, This
is just the style. But I think there is a
pretty strong argument to be made that the thing is spaces,
uh draw our attention. Spaces can be used effectively if
(34:09):
they're they're used on purpose. They can be used to
sort of heighten the message of other things in the
visual design. But if you include them sort of slap dash,
if you include them by accident, then all you're doing
is drawing the eyes away from important content or content
that you want to be seen is important, towards just
absolute nothing that has no you know, it's you're not
(34:31):
heightening anything. You're just drawing eyes away from what they
should be looking at. By point of comparison, I would
say that rests moments of silence are used on purpose
and music to heighten the effect of what is there.
You know, rests are one of the most important things
in making music good. But you would not want blank
(34:52):
space inserted haphazard lee without that kind of intention in
the middle of a song might be okay. Between songs
on a record, you wouldn't want it just going in
between verses there, let's just have a break for a
few seconds. Yeah, unless it's like the break if you're
listening to some drumming bass or something and you need
you know, everything reaches a point and then it stops.
Then you know what's going to happen next, a massive
(35:15):
change and like high energy is going to occur. But
that's meaningful white space, like it's reading your attention. Yeah,
that's the rest, so I I yeah, I totally understand.
I think the same is true for the design layout
of of a page in a magazine or a newspaper,
if you just have meaningless space in between the contents
that that kind of throws you off. You're like, wait,
why is that there? I imagine, Uh, maybe we can
(35:37):
hear from from folks out in the restaurant world. I'm
sure they're there are rules about this concerning the plating
of food too, because I bet you don't want to
have trapped white space on the plate in some form
or another, Like you don't want it to look like
something goes, something has been admitted from the plate, you know,
like well where did the pork chop go? Like that's
the space clearly where a pork chop could go. That's
(35:59):
the only interpretation my mind can make of it. That's funny.
I'm sure some pretentious chef has tried that. We just
doughnut shaped platings of food. So that's all. I I
feel like everything I just said maybe kind of a
ramble and covered a go lot of ground. But I
guess the the basic take home from all of this
is the vacuum, the void and emptiness, white space, whatever
(36:20):
however you're describing it or or encountering it, especially in
a visual sense, like it it has, it has meaning
one way or or another, like it's not a completely
neutral thing one could even, I guess, get into the
world of literature, right and printed books. You know, um
what what is the feeling of the blank space at
(36:43):
the end of a chapter, between chapters or it's often
been discussed. Writers will discuss like the horror of the
blank page when they can't think of something to write,
and so forth, like the horror of that kind of void.
You know, I have a whole tangent that I want
to get in to about horror akue in cartography and
map making, which is very much related to fear of
(37:05):
the void in art. But raises some fresh issues of
its own. But looking at the time, I think we've
got a cap today's episode here, and so we will
get into that in the next episode in the series.
All right, so yes, join us for more discussions of
the Void on the next episode of Stuff to Blow
Your Mind. Reminder that two season thursdays of the days
when we publish our core episodes of the show. On
(37:28):
Monday's we do listener mail, on Wednesday's we do a
short form artifact or monster fact, and on Friday's we
do Weird how Cinema. That's our time to set aside
most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.
Huge thanks to our audio producer J J. Paseway. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
(37:49):
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart
Radio with the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(38:10):
wherever you listen me to your favorite shows
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
today we're gonna be starting up a series on the
subject of horror vakui, which can be translated directly as
(00:26):
fear of the void, but has also been paraphrased in
the form of the statement nature of horrors of vacuum. Now,
I think this is gonna be a great subject for us,
because this principle has facets that appear in art, psychology,
and all kinds of other domains. But it's often traced
all the way back in its origin to the scientific
(00:46):
writings of Aristotle in the fourth century b CE. Though
Aristotle did not use exactly this phrase, of course, how
could he. It's latin um. But he did argue in
his book on Physics that the con incept of a
vacuum in nature was implausible and in fact even worthy
of ridicule. Uh So this occurs in Aristotle's famous Physics.
(01:10):
This is book for part eight, though his attempted refutation
of vacuum physics spans several sections. I think it's like
parts six through nine of the book or so. And
it's interesting that Aristotle does not approach this subject from
kind of from first principles, but instead he approaches it
by entering an ongoing debate among other philosophers where there's
(01:33):
a camp arguing against the existence of empty space, and
that apparently contains figures like Anexagoras, and then there's a
camp that argues for the existence of empty space, and
that contains the Pythagorean school and others. So, in trying
to stake his own claim in this controversy, Aristotle makes
the argument that the existence of empty space is logically incoherent,
(01:56):
and this leads to a harsh joke at the expense
of space it's self. He writes, but even if we
consider it on its own merits, the so called vacuum
will be found to be really vacuous. Huh. That might
be funny or in ancient Greek. I'm not sure. So.
I think we'll come back specifically to the history of
horror vakay in physics in a subsequent part in this series.
(02:21):
But I thought this was a good place to start
because a lot of people seem to trace this general
idea back to Aristotle, and they often identify him as
sort of the grandfather of this tradition of being intolerant
of empty space or of the very idea of emptiness. Yeah,
and just the whole idea that nature of whore is
(02:42):
a vacuum like it's you could you could also kind
of translated as, hey, anytime there's a place where stuff
isn't but stuff could be, well, guess where you're gonna
eventually find stuff right there? Um, And you know, you could.
You can apply that to economics, you can apply it
to evolution. Um, because for the most part, like various
interpretations of that hold very true. Yeah. And of course
(03:05):
there are tons of examples, uh, in in physics where
you can identify the sort of phenomenonomy if, for example, uh,
interpy particle entropy. If you take a rectangular container and
half of it is filled with gas and the other
half has no gas in it, Uh, if you just
like let it go on its own and do nothing
to it, eventually the gas will even out in distribution
(03:26):
and fill the entire container. That something about nature seems
to reject that that arbitrary starting point of division and
interpete tends to just have everything spread out even out
it doesn't want to let that emptiness remain. Yeah, or
um on the other end of the spectrum, if you
have an empty drawer or cabinet in your kitchen, um,
(03:50):
see how long that lasts. Because eventually, eventually something's gonna
come along and it's going to be the perfect place
to stick it. Right. But one big place where where
horror akui has been recognized throughout the years is in
the world of art, that's right. Yeah, And in this
we get into you have this softer treatment of the
vacuum of empty spaces and also a lot of I
(04:13):
think ultimately discussions are arguments over like what what constitutes
an empty space and so forth. But um, yeah, and
within the worlds of art and design, horror vacuate basically
comes down to a tendency to fill blank spaces instead
of leaving them empty. I've also seen it argued as
a kind of maximalism opposing minimalism. So you know, it's
(04:38):
like like I'm gonna I'm gonna create this painting or look,
you know, think of it. I guess from like like
a street art graffiti kind of standpoint, What am I
going to paint on this wall? And how much of
this wall am I going to paint? Well, I'm going
to paint all of it, and I'm gonna fill it
with with just so many things? Or are you is
it going to be mostly sort of a blank canvas
drawing your attention to the one I a songbird that
(05:01):
you've created at the middle of this uh street campus. Yeah. Now,
for for my own part, and I imagine everyone out
there has some version of this, But for my own part,
my mind quickly goes to a few different handy examples.
Some of my favorite artists do seem to abhor the
vacuum on some level. For instance, I've I've long been
a fan of the dark surrealism of of Irving Norman,
(05:24):
and his work tended to consist of very complex, crowded,
dynamic expanses that had a lot of like urban and
industrial energy to them, um and and and so. It
has a lot of chaos, it has a lot of
soul listeness, and a lot of it is about sort
of capturing the spirit as he saw it of the
modern world. Oh, that's interesting that the connection to modernity,
(05:47):
because I think a lot of people over the years
have made this argument that something about how how culture
changes over time. Maybe a lot of this is driven
by technology results in the constant sort of ingress of
stuff into more and more uh previously unfilled spaces of
(06:07):
your your attentional life. So whereas life used to, at
least according to this argument, involve a lot more kind
of boredom and idleness and sort of sitting around with
your own thoughts, not having anything to do and and
things like that. Uh, now there's just like always something
to occupy you and occupy your attention. Yeah, and his
(06:29):
works in particular, they do have this feeling to them. Um.
The one I included for you to look at here,
and certainly listeners can look this piece up as well.
This is war and Peace. It's a triptych. And this
is a piece that I've gotten to see in person
that was on display in San Francisco at least for
a while. Big piece, and a piece like this is
great to see in person as well, because you get
(06:50):
to sort of get a little closer and check out
some of the many details that make it up. For instance,
one of the pieces here, you see all these buildings
and it like a a realistic view of skyscrapers in
each little window has somebody inside with like some sort
of paint or horrific or board expression on their face. Um.
(07:11):
So yeah, he he really seems to fill every available
space with some sort of detail. Mm hmm. Now they're
plently of older artists that come to mind. Uh, you know,
pre modern artist like Hieronymous Bosh comes to mind. Peter Brugal,
the Elder Um. Another contemporary example that I instantly think
of would be the visionary art of of Alex Gray.
(07:33):
You know, very psychedelic but also just filled with flow
and color, and there's just this sense of every available
space has been sort of engulfed by uh, energies that
cannot normally be viewed with the naked eye. Yeah. Now
you you raise Hieronymous Bosh, and that really got my
gears cranking because when it comes to horror Vakawy and Bosh.
(07:56):
I could be wrong, but I sense a trend in
his religious paintings where there's an association of business with
bad things, with chaos and sin, whereas empty space seems
to be more associated with order and godliness and righteousness.
(08:16):
So you know, hell is bustling and full and just
teeming with activity, whereas heaven or maybe the Garden of
Eden before the Fall is orderly and clean and has
plenty of empty space, plenty floor space. One example, of course,
I think of here is the Triptic The Last Judgment,
where if you see, you know, the Garden of Eden,
(08:37):
apparently a a time before sin, there's just a lot
of kind of empty ground, is like not a lot
going on. There's there's plenty of expanses that have yet
to be filled with anything. And also if you look
at the middle panel of the Triptic, there is war
and chaos and suffering and disease and violence and stuff
taking place down on Earth, and it's a very busy seen.
(09:00):
But up above you see Christ and the angels and
everything is very clean, and there's like not a whole
lot going on. There's a lot of empty space up
in the sky. Yeah, this is a great point. So
in a way, I wonder if that's kind of an
inverse horror vakawee where you know that that, like the
the vakawi is actually the indicator of goodness and orderliness,
and and you know, when there's too much stuff going on,
(09:21):
that's a sign that something has gone wrong, that that
order has broken down. But clearly this is not a
universal association within art or even within religious art. For example,
Dante's Paradiso seems to be anything but empty. You know,
the heavens in that vision are crammed with overwhelming, incomprehensibly
(09:42):
busy stimuli. There's you know, a lot of things where
He's just like, there was so much I couldn't understand
what I was looking at. Um. And in some versions
of gnosticism also the sort of ultimate ideal plane of
reality and the sum of all divine potential is called
the clear roma, which in Greek means fullness, the opposite
(10:03):
of emptiness or void, your example of here from the
last judgment, this this made me think about okay, and
at least in the middle part of it, you're talking about,
you know, here we have a Christ appearing in the
sky and everything is a little more open, and we
see the blue and ultimately the white of of naked
sky there. And I was comparing this to some other
(10:26):
words that I'll mention a second. But it made me wonder, like,
when is the sky full and when is the sky empty? Um?
Because it seems like on some level a blue or
white sky in a painting is certainly a different animal
compared to say, a red sky, in the same way
that the standard wall color for a museum is usually,
at least today not black or red, but a nice
(10:47):
white or a muted gray. But on the other hand,
like a night sky is not necessarily like the darkness
of space is not necessarily understood to be uh full,
but I guess it could be depending on how you're looking.
It's certainly full of stars. Yeah, and specifically, I mean
the skies are, yeah, they're They're rendered in very different ways.
(11:08):
I mean sometimes the stars themselves are very busy. I
think of, I guess this is obvious to go to.
But the starry night yeah, yeah. Uh. And as as
far as Dante goes, I I instantly thought back to
Gustav dres Later so much later illustrations of the Divine Comedy.
And sometimes those do and sometimes they don't match up
(11:28):
with this general idea. Like there's one particularly famous image
from Dore's illustrations where we see um let's let see
um Dante and his his guy. Who's this guy in Paradisio.
It's uh in the Paradiso It's it's Beatrice. It's Beatrix. Yes,
that's right. So it's it's Dante and Beatrice, and here
in front of them is just this incomprehensible. Uh. It's
(11:51):
almost like the eye of Sauron with with just multitudes
of swirling angelic beings all around it. Yeah, it's all
you're looking into, just a tunnel made of like nanotechnology,
except it's it's all angel wings. Yeah. And then there's
another one of Dora's illustrations where we see Dante and
(12:11):
b standing here on a cloud and we see multiple
rings of angels, And certainly there are a lot of
angels in each ring, but there's a lot more open space,
particularly above them, and there's an openness to that image
that you don't see in a lot of the Doray
illustrations of any of the three realms of the Divine Comedy. Agreed,
(12:31):
And so that that division, uh seems to be a
you know, whether you want to represent beauty and holiness
as as a kind of incredibly busy phenomenon or as
something with a lot of empty space in it. I
don't see an overwhelming trend one way or the other.
I mean, it seems like a sort of a pretty
evenly divided issue of preference, because I think of tons
(12:53):
of paintings from all throughout history and all throughout different
cultures where empty space is clearly the thing that makes
the painting so beautiful or the art so beautiful. One
that came to my mind while we were getting ready
for this episode was there's a Chinese work of art
from I think the thirteenth century called on a Mountain
(13:13):
Path in Spring by Ma Yuan. Do you know that one?
Rob I have just pulled it up in front of me. Oh, yeah,
this is beautiful, and I'm not familiar with this piece. Yeah.
One thing I really like about it, so to try
to describe it, shows like a man on a path
and there are sort of like some trees drooping over
around him, and there's a bird in flight up ahead
of him. Uh, and you see the ridges of some
(13:36):
mountains in in the background in one half of the painting.
But one thing I really love about this painting is
that essentially only half of it is filled in. So
behind the man you see the outlines of all these forms.
There are tree trunks, and uh, there's the path. You
see a little you know, ridges and indentations in the
ground and tree roots and shrubs, and you see the
(13:57):
mountains in the background, and then in the they're half
of the painting. Essentially all the forms just disappear and
it's almost entirely empty space except for a little suggestion
of the path continuing along on the ground and a bird.
Mm hmmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's a beautiful piece, you know.
And I also want to mention that many of the
(14:18):
artists that one might point to and say, Okay, this
is someone who definitely abhors the vacuum. Uh, they're they're
definitely a maximalist. You can also find plenty of examples
where they play with opening things up a little bit,
like even just uh, looking back through some of Irving
Norman's works, like, there are of some pieces where you
have fairly sizeable expanses of say sky, sometimes blue sky,
(14:39):
other times extremely blood red skies, but sky. Nonetheless, I
don't know what this is. So my my ruined, vulgar
mind looks at one of these paintings, the one with
the red sky, and I just think hell razor too. Yeah,
I mean, it is a it is a hellish image.
M have some of those vibes to it, for sure.
(15:02):
I think it's that the red sky and then the
sort of like maze of walls beneath that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
this one is called war Wounded Ends. That's another one
of my favorite pieces by Irving Norman. It is beautiful.
I apologize for the Barker comparison. No, no, no, I
mean I think it's happening. Thank, thank thank. I mentioned
(15:29):
the walls of of a museum earlier because I think
this is also key as well, because when you think
of gallery walls and even picture frames in a modern sense,
and we tend to think of a very minimalist um features, right.
The trend nowadays at least is, of course, the display
works of art in unassuming frames on largely blank walls,
(15:52):
with at least some amount of space between each work,
sort of give allow each work a little room to breathe.
But this was of course not always the fashion, and
isn't always the fashion. Maximalist and minimalist approaches are just
trends and ensure that the complex wallpaper may be pulled
away in the geometric wall to wall carpeting, maybe ripped
(16:13):
up from space, but given enough time, these things may
come back into fashion again and you'll get even crazier
wallpaper plastered back up and even more complex carpet installed
wall to wall. But there are some interesting properties involved,
like what does it do when you have something worth
looking at in the midst of white space? Uh? You know,
(16:33):
what does emptiness? What does the void do? And there's
an offsided quote from art historian Ernst Gombric of nineteen nine,
two thousand and one uh, in which he stated, quote,
the richer the elements of the frame, the more the
center will gain in dignity. I believe this is a
part of his theory of perception, and I think I
(16:54):
think it's a pretty insightful statement, and we can we
can apply it to the blank walls behind a canvas,
to the assuming picture frame, or even elements within a
given work where the busy aspects of a piece focus
our attention towards something more open, like for instance, Christ
floating in the sky above. Uh, this otherwise chaotic scene
(17:15):
and painting by Bosh. Oh, that's kind of interesting. So
that might explain the popularity of these very ornate, highly
textured you know, frames around paintings with all these ridges
and swirls and so forth. Yeah, and certainly you will
you will often encounter, even in modern museums, sometimes these
older pieces that are still in very ornate frames. And
(17:37):
I'm always interested in that because, I guess because it
kind of throws me for a curve comparing it to
more modern works and modern framing. UM. And then you'll
encounter this piece that has some sort of picture frame
that I mean could arguably be seen as distracting from
the piece itself, but but maybe not maybe guiding you
in now. As far as the term horror vacuie goes,
(18:00):
depending on tastes and trends, you'll see it in the
art world, sometimes invoked as praise, other times invoked as criticism. UM.
Take the the often dizzy art of Jackson Pollock of
nineteen twelve through nineteen fifty six. UM. It's kind of
a prime example of this duality. Even though not all
of his works abhore the vacuum, you'll find you'll find
(18:22):
a little space in some of his pieces, and I
think maybe those are the ones that I I may
be a little more drawn to. Oh, but you mean that,
Like critics have described it in terms of horror vakay
both positively and negatively, like this is good because it
sates my horror vakawee, or this is bad because it's
just a product of horror Vaki. Yeah, yeah, and I
(18:44):
think and I think in the case of of of Pollock,
and people are more familiar with art criticism out there
that make and can chime in on this. But it
seems like you see it invoked more as a criticism,
you know, almost like, well, there's clearly this artist is
afraid of the vacuum. Other Wise they would have given
us a little more space. But I don't know, even
the really busy Jackson polite pieces, which which I think
(19:06):
I have also had the chance to see in person,
some of these pieces like they really need to see
in person, because you do get it's a similar situation.
You can take it all in, but you can step
a little closer and sort of look at just some
of the closer details, and it's really enthralling. Now. The
term has also been used to describe cultural artistic traditions.
I've seen it used to describe the work of the
(19:28):
ancient Egyptians, as well as the trend in Islamic art
towards the expansive use of geometric patterns. Apparently, however, the
originator of the term in art criticism itself was Italian
born art and literature critic Mario praz Who of eighteen
ninety six through two, who used it mostly to slam
(19:50):
the cluttered visual interior design one sees particularly of in
Victorian households. Victorian design. Uh Joe I included a uh
sort of stereotypical image of a victor, of a rich
Victorian sitting room here, and I think it raises the
question is this too busy? Or is this just comfy?
(20:11):
Is this? Is this like hoarded fancy items? Or is
this somebody who want to do surround themselves with the
things they like and sort of warm themselves in the
glow of those things. So so the critical idea here
could be, yeah, like is there too much patterned wallpaper,
too much patterned upholstery on the furniture, too many little
(20:31):
do d ads all over the place. It's just the
room is too busy. You should live in a roth coo. Yeah.
And I guess one of the things that really comes
out and thinking about in terms of art is, of course,
art criticism is generally highly subjective, and so also is
the the use of a term like horror of vacuie
(20:51):
in terms of of art and design, or any kind
of creative endeavor and uh in film is not immune
to this. Um. I was really excited by this because
I was looking around for I don't think I was
even particularly looking for something about film, but I ran
across discussion of horror vacuie in Jollo films. Yes, Vangoria Magazines.
(21:13):
Alexandra Helen Nicholas has written film criticism discussing the subject
of horror vacuie in Jollo films. The book in question,
which I haven't had time to read in full yet,
but what I've read so far is is quite good.
It's the Jollo canvas art excess and horror cinema shallow
is absolutely a genre of excess, and that is part
(21:37):
of what makes it so enticing. Is it's just unrestrained
expressiveness and gaudiness. Yeah, yeah, it's Um, it's this of course,
largely we're dealing with the tag in cinema here, though
though it's influence becomes such that it spills out into
European cinema in general and also has a big influence
on the global slasher genre. Uh yeah, it's generally stylish
(22:01):
to some degree gratuitous. Uh you know, it's flashy and
uh so Hella Nicholas here points out that naturally, uh
horror vacaie doesn't just apply to highbrow art. She cites
the illustrations of Robert Crumb as an example, and then
points to a couple of other horror cinema examples possible
examples such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Uh, particularly than the
(22:26):
original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Particularly I believe she was pointing out, uh,
these some of these early scenes where we're not even
getting into the blood and the excess um, but just
like scenes where the the inside of the Chainsaw Massacre
household is just cluttered with all sorts of of you know,
uncanny items like skulls and bird bones and knickknacks. And
(22:48):
she also points to some other examples where there's like
just where it's a similar situation where a lot of
disturbing stuff sort of thrown at you so fast and
and and you don't general rule in in the horror,
you know, don't don't show the monster too long, don't
show the gore effect too long, and it can kind
of overpower you like, overpowers the circuits with unease or revulsion.
(23:10):
But to read a quick quote here quote in Jallo cinema.
While certainly not lacking in moments of excessive blood and guts,
excessive nudity, etcetera, it is also just as much frequently
marked by an excess of style through color, music, nis
on sin and even performance styles. These films, too, are
(23:33):
marked by a sense of too muchness, an excess we
can loosely align with this tradition of horror vacoe. That
is an excellent description of Jalo and what makes it
so special that the core stylistic feature of it is
too muchness. It's just a lot in every possible way. Yeah,
(23:54):
And I don't know about you, but even just thinking
about this made me think of various stills from any
Seven Suspiria by a Dario Argento where there's just there's
a lot of too muchness in in the film, even
the shots that are not bloody shots. There are several
really bloody shots that are just overpowering the senses. But
also other scenes that have like a Mario Bava hyper
(24:18):
color realm sensibility to it, or just like a lot
of a lot of lines and shapes thrown at you. Yeah,
a lot of interior designs. Wall. I don't know if
it's wallpaper, but painted walls with busy designs, you know,
just fixtures and artworks and just stuff everywhere. It is
not a minimalist looking film. Yeah. Now, now speaking of film,
(24:41):
I also and looking at all this, I couldn't help
but think of movie posters as well. Uh, sort of
the difference between it and an exciting pact maximalist a
movie poster versus the minimalist movie poster, which was certainly
a design trend not too long ago, maybe in the
last ten years. And I guess there's still a lot
(25:02):
of it going on, maybe not at the professional level,
but sort of as a design exercise and art exercise
among other folks. Yeah. Like like you know, I think
of posters by American artist Drew Strussan, who did uh
poster art for Blade Runner, various Star Wars films, also
the N seven Killer Worm movie Squirm. Uh. These are
(25:28):
all three poster examples, and you can look these up
where there's just a lot packed into the image. They're
they're beautiful and they seem to overflow with the energy
of those films, be at the drama, the sort of
neon intrigue of something like like Blade Runner, or just
the monstrous squirminess of squirm. Yeah, well, there's a lot
(25:48):
of actors heads, so they're trying to pack actual marketing
information into the painting. You're gonna see here here all
the actors that you know and love that are going
to get you into the theater. But also they're trying
to give you some information about the plot, so you
will see like moments or scenes from the movie in
the poster. But then also, yeah, like you say, they're
trying to suggest the uh, I don't know, the kind
(26:11):
of like throbbing energy of the movie. Like the horror
ones are going to have a kind of a squirm
nous to them, you know, kind of like a kind
of queasy light coming off of them, whereas the the
sci fi action movies have this glow as if from
stars in the background or something. Yeah, and with something
like squirm, they're they're they're not really any big name
(26:33):
actors in that. You're not trying to market it that way,
so you pull back on the the identifiable faces and
heads and you just focus on the squirm nous of
the picture. Now, I really did enjoy a lot of
those recent redesigns of classic movie posters, but in minimalist form. Though,
I think that works a lot better for movies that
people already know and love than it does for movies
(26:57):
that nobody's ever seen before. Like when when you're advertising
a movie and you're trying to like catch people's eye
and make them see it, that seems like when you
really do actually want to try to cram a bunch
of stuff into the poster to like cast a lot
of lines essentially like oh do you like this actor?
Their faces on there somewhere. Yeah. Like I was looking
around for minimal examples of all three of these films
(27:18):
that I just mentioned. I found that, you know, there
are a lot of them that have been created for
Blade Runner in the Star Wars films. But I found
an episode three poster for Star Wars and they did
the smart thing of basically invoking the shape of Darth
Vader's head. Like, that's an that's an easy one. You
can go super minimalist on that because it's a very
identifiable character outline. Yes, totally. I really like this one
(27:42):
for Blade Runner that is just a yellow background with
a black sort of minimalist geometric rendering of the Origami unicorn. Yeah,
it's a it's more of I think, maybe on the
cute level, where it's like, oh, okay, I see what
they were going. Oh yeah, that's right, that's from the movie,
a little detail and kind of a wink to folks
who remember it. But I also found, surprisingly, and I
(28:05):
got this off of the Telltale mind dot com. They
have a blog both there where it's Squirm nineteen seventy six,
Sorry I got I may have gotten that the year
wrong and scoring there, but Scorm nineteen seventy six the
visuals where they have a whole bunch of promotional visuals
from the film and a lot of it's very squirmy.
Um there was one one particular international uh poster or
(28:27):
one sheet or or or lobby card here this just
absolutely loaded with worm images. But then there is strangely
a single one that that has just the words squirm
with kind of an interesting font. I guess that looks
like maybe it was written by a worm that had
been dipped in ink and it just says scorned. The
monster is seventy six in cursive, yeah in in in
(28:49):
worm curson. If I guess, like I said, I think
a worm maybe is supposed to have made that s
so I don't know all of this is subjective again,
but it it does make you think about you know what, well,
what the difference is between cranking it up and pulling
back on it. And certainly when it comes to the
use of empty spaces or perceived empty spaces and visual
design than now. I also think it's very interesting to
(29:20):
think about this concept in UM so called visionary art
and psychedelic art and then also psychedelic cinema UM, because
you know, think of either of these categories and you
often think of dizziness. While the psychedelic experience itself, of
course is going to vary greatly. There is often a
description of images and ideas filling the blank or the empty.
(29:41):
Things that don't have meaning take on heightened meaning. UM
surfaces crawl, move and breathe, And from an AI perspective,
I suppose the now sort of out of fashion al
I don't hear as much about it. A Google Deep
dream kind of created a version of this with its
tendency to find dog faces in every thing. So any
given image, any even like a blank background, would suddenly
(30:05):
become faintly alive with intertwined cute dog faces. Yeah, like
you take a picture of a lawnmower and the you know,
the starter button is a pug's face, and the uh
and the and the wheels will become little gold nurch
reever is. It's cute. Yeah, but it makes me think
too about just the human tendency to define patterns and
(30:27):
to fill emptiness with meaning and things. Even in the
case of deprivation, you know, some sort of sensory deprivation
scenario or some sort of isolation scenario, the mind eventually
starts finding details where they are not details, you know,
sometimes to harmful degrees. M And there there are a
(30:47):
lot of treatments of this too in in in various
papers I was running across. You know, you get into
whole discussions of say, marketing, Um, how do you fill
your show window at at a at a at a
fancy of fashion store or a clothing store. Do you
just fill it up with the various items you're you're selling? Um?
And you certainly see this approach in some shop store windows.
(31:09):
Or do you have like that one piece and lots
of blank space, open space, or maybe you know a
few splashes of color. Uh. You know, there are arguments
to be made for both sides. They are also a
very specific arguments about what kind of clientele are being
attracted to this store window versus another. Well, yeah, and
that's interesting because it brings us to I would say
(31:32):
that there is a fairly consistent thread of class association
with maximalist versus minimalist design um, which is that minimalist
designs are more often associated with wealth. Yeah. I think
one classic example of that is, of course, the the
upscale dinner plate versus the I don't know, the comfort
(31:54):
food dinner plate. The comfort food dinner plates they filled
from an all you can eat buffet. Uh June only
is a is a pretty pretty loaded dish. There's not
a lot of white space remaining on that dish. Meanwhile,
what do you think of when you think of of
true upscale dining? What do you think of when you
think of, say, the recent film The Menu, which is uh,
(32:18):
you know, very much a send up in parody of
the high dining experience in the business and culture surrounding it.
You think of a whole bunch of of of empty
plate and like maybe like a few piles or puddings
or some sort of very interesting plating of the dish
that doesn't take up too much real estate. Yeah, you
will see a lot of plate. This also made me
(32:40):
think about something that anybody out there has any any
dealings with newspaper pagination or I guess design in general,
any kind of like design and layout, and that is
the subject of of not only white space, but trapped
white space. For those of you unaware that the general
rule has long been when it comes to a newspaper page,
(33:03):
there doesn't have to be an endless cascade of text
and images taking up every space on the page. You
can have some white space in there, you know, give
your features and your images and your text a little
room to breathe. But while you can have white space,
you do not want to have trapped white space. So
you can think of it this way, like your your
(33:24):
text and your images, this is all one continent or island.
And it's okay to have inlets and harbors, uh that
have white in them, that you know, that are accessible
to the outer void. But you don't want lakes and
pools of trapped white space within the piece. And you know,
I think it's tempting from either side, if you're inside
(33:45):
the world of pagination and design or outside of it too.
On some level wonder, well, this is really makes sense
or is this just a standard? This is just this
is just what they have told us to do, This
is just the style. But I think there is a
pretty strong argument to be made that the thing is spaces,
uh draw our attention. Spaces can be used effectively if
(34:09):
they're they're used on purpose. They can be used to
sort of heighten the message of other things in the
visual design. But if you include them sort of slap dash,
if you include them by accident, then all you're doing
is drawing the eyes away from important content or content
that you want to be seen is important, towards just
absolute nothing that has no you know, it's you're not
(34:31):
heightening anything. You're just drawing eyes away from what they
should be looking at. By point of comparison, I would
say that rests moments of silence are used on purpose
and music to heighten the effect of what is there.
You know, rests are one of the most important things
in making music good. But you would not want blank
(34:52):
space inserted haphazard lee without that kind of intention in
the middle of a song might be okay. Between songs
on a record, you wouldn't want it just going in
between verses there, let's just have a break for a
few seconds. Yeah, unless it's like the break if you're
listening to some drumming bass or something and you need
you know, everything reaches a point and then it stops.
Then you know what's going to happen next, a massive
(35:15):
change and like high energy is going to occur. But
that's meaningful white space, like it's reading your attention. Yeah,
that's the rest, so I I yeah, I totally understand.
I think the same is true for the design layout
of of a page in a magazine or a newspaper,
if you just have meaningless space in between the contents
that that kind of throws you off. You're like, wait,
why is that there? I imagine, Uh, maybe we can
(35:37):
hear from from folks out in the restaurant world. I'm
sure they're there are rules about this concerning the plating
of food too, because I bet you don't want to
have trapped white space on the plate in some form
or another, Like you don't want it to look like
something goes, something has been admitted from the plate, you know,
like well where did the pork chop go? Like that's
the space clearly where a pork chop could go. That's
(35:59):
the only interpretation my mind can make of it. That's funny.
I'm sure some pretentious chef has tried that. We just
doughnut shaped platings of food. So that's all. I I
feel like everything I just said maybe kind of a
ramble and covered a go lot of ground. But I
guess the the basic take home from all of this
is the vacuum, the void and emptiness, white space, whatever
(36:20):
however you're describing it or or encountering it, especially in
a visual sense, like it it has, it has meaning
one way or or another, like it's not a completely
neutral thing one could even, I guess, get into the
world of literature, right and printed books. You know, um
what what is the feeling of the blank space at
(36:43):
the end of a chapter, between chapters or it's often
been discussed. Writers will discuss like the horror of the
blank page when they can't think of something to write,
and so forth, like the horror of that kind of void.
You know, I have a whole tangent that I want
to get in to about horror akue in cartography and
map making, which is very much related to fear of
(37:05):
the void in art. But raises some fresh issues of
its own. But looking at the time, I think we've
got a cap today's episode here, and so we will
get into that in the next episode in the series.
All right, so yes, join us for more discussions of
the Void on the next episode of Stuff to Blow
Your Mind. Reminder that two season thursdays of the days
when we publish our core episodes of the show. On
(37:28):
Monday's we do listener mail, on Wednesday's we do a
short form artifact or monster fact, and on Friday's we
do Weird how Cinema. That's our time to set aside
most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.
Huge thanks to our audio producer J J. Paseway. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
(37:49):
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart
Radio with the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(38:10):
wherever you listen me to your favorite shows
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