Horror Vacui, Part 2

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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Episode Transcript

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
we're back with part two of our series on horror
vakawie or the fear of the void, the fear of emptiness,

(00:25):
also sometimes paraphrased as the statement that nature abhors a vacuum. Uh.
This is a topic that has many different faces we're
going to touch on in this series. It's uh of course,
has manifestations in the world of physics and the physical sciences. Uh,
and and figures into the history of how we conceptualize
space in the vacuum, but it also has manifestations in

(00:50):
the world of psychology and in the world of art.
In the last episode we focus mainly on art, and
we're going to pick up with talking about art today. Yeah,
and uh, Joe, I don't know if this was the
case with you, but I also found this to be
This is a really fun topic to research, but also
at times a slightly challenging one, do in part to
just how frequently the term horror vakoee is invoked in papers,

(01:14):
sometimes at the drop of a hat. Yes, this happens
with us sometimes with with like you are searching for uh,
writings about a concept, but instead what you will find
is a lot of writings that use that concept as
a metaphor for what they want to talk about, right right,
So it seems to be the case that if you

(01:34):
want to find something that has just the the the
invocation of the term at least a tangential connection to
horror vakoe, then you can find it. For instance, Uh,
if you want a paper then invokes some horror vakoee
and Spanish horror icon Paul Nashy, Well you can do it.
I found three of them with just a feel a

(01:55):
good search. Yeah. Um, and you know these are paper
where there there's not it's not the core um thing
they're going after. But at some point or another they're
going to use this term to describe a particular artist
or that artist's work, or perhaps even you know, counter
examples to what a particular artist was doing. So it
seems kind of unavoidable, especially given just how you know,

(02:19):
how common this aspect seems to be to human perception
and creation. The idea that you know, you have minimalism,
you have maximalism and you know, the various spaces between. Yes,
this is all true, and I at least encountered another
difficulty with reading about horror akawee, which is that I've
noticed the term is used very differently, uh, sometimes with

(02:43):
the sort of pejorative connotation and sometimes without. And for
an example of this, I was watching a lecture about
horror akerwy in the history of map making by the
historian of cartography chet van Douser, former guests on the show,
by the way, and I'll talk about uh his writings
on this subject later in this episode. But this lecture

(03:05):
invoked a definition of horror akawee by a scholar named
Braxton Solderman. And in this case, Solderman, I think would
not use the term horror akawee to apply to in
general works that are busy or highly decorated. I mean,
there are tons of things that would be very busy,
highly decorated, you know, densely detailed works of art that

(03:27):
would not get this term. Instead, he would use it
specifically to refer to the motivation driving cases where you
would judge busy art or busy design to not be
a thoughtful and effective design choice. So the quote goes horror.
Akawee is the fear of empty space that results in
the over marking of visual space, excessive decoration that threatens

(03:51):
to overwhelm what is being decorated, the stuffing of gaps
in say Jura with further representation. Uh So, it's not
just anything that's busy or crowded, but it's things that
are busy or crowded in a kind of compulsive, uncontrolled way. Okay, okay,
so uh so what Sotoman is saying here then would
be that's something like, Um, I don't know, the works

(04:14):
of Irving Norman or one of these other artists we
discussed in Part one who are trying to make some
comment or create art that in some way invokes a
sense of chaos or disorder. Um, it wouldn't necessarily apply
to what they're doing, because it is a like a
definite choice. But it might apply to the outsider art
or folk card of say Howard Finster. No, I don't

(04:36):
think he would necessarily apply the term to them. I mean,
I don't know what he personally would apply to. I
think he's just saying that whoever is using this term,
however you're using it, it would be applying to things
that you think are excessive or overmarked, whatever that means
to you. Okay, okay, Yeah, So he's making a distinction
then between uh and and of course vowing to um

(04:58):
individual interpretation. That one view of an artist might be
that they are thoughtfully invoking, say, a sense of chaos
or disorder by filling you know, all the margins with
with the images of such disorder, while on the other hand,
there might be another artist out there where it is
more of a compulsion. It is more of a situation

(05:19):
where they have perhaps a lot to say, too much
to say, and are trying to like fit it all in. Yeah. Possibly,
Or of course, it wouldn't just have to be representing, um,
you know, chaos or disorder, could also be representing richness
or anything, you know, whatever the reason is for the
infilling of detail. Uh, it would be something that is

(05:40):
done on purpose or done for a reason, rather than
something that has done compulsively, maybe driven by a kind
of anxiety about leaving blank or uniform space. Uh. And
and that latter, since the one driven by horror vakuy
is in this definition, one that detracts from the effect
of the piece. One that quote threatens to over elm

(06:00):
what is being decorated. So again, I think this author
would probably not use the term to refer to things
that are busy or crowded as a result of a
like well considered deliberate choice by the artist or designer.
It would refer to things where the infilling seems haphazard
or unwarranted or ineffective. So, while I am usually quite

(06:21):
partial too busy detail rich artwork, uh, there are examples
I can think of where I can look at an
artwork or design choice and say, yeah, I think this
just looks like compulsive behavior that seems driven by a
kind of discomfort with blank space. And one example I
would agree with characterizing this way is cited in the

(06:41):
same lecture by chet van Deuser I mentioned a minute ago.
It's the practice of line filling in medieval manuscripts, and
so maybe this will help illustrate So uh, this is uh,
This this page I want to show you rob is
from a manuscript known as Walter's one thirteen, which is
a late thirteenth century Latin Psalter Assaulter, meaning a book

(07:02):
that contains the biblical Book of Psalms, and it's from
the region of France that was then Flanders. Now you know,
I love my medieval manuscripts with zany margins. I want
donkeys playing trumpets. I want armored war rabbits locked in
battle with naked men writing centipede dogs. I want it all.

(07:23):
But even with that predisposition, I think I I would
be critical of what we see in some of the
pages of Walters one thirteen, such as the one sided
by Van Duzer. And this is where there are illustrations
intruding into the very lines of the text itself. So
the issue is that when a line of text does
not stretch all the way to the margin, when it

(07:45):
does not fill out the column, uh, the artists here,
I don't know if it was the copyist or the
rubricator or somebody else, literally fills in the rest of
the line with a rectangular illustration of some kind, so
it might be a mouse head or just some vines
with red and gold leaves, or big old p hen uh.

(08:06):
I like these types of illustrations, but this does seem
kind of excessive to me, like it would actually make
the text harder to read and detract from its effect,
and it just kind of makes the page feel cluttered.
And like there's no space to breathe. Kind of going
back to our episodes on the history of the paragraph
and the the importance of blank space in prose text,

(08:27):
I would agree with the caveat to our eyes reading
across the centuries. Well, yeah, I'm talking about my opinion.
Yeah yeah, but yes too as a modern viewer looking
at this, Uh, the p hens and the strange dog
creatures are a bit distracting. Um not not that I
can read the actual text anyway. Now right, well, well,

(08:51):
to connect again with the paragraphs episode, I mean, here
we see very little spacing between the parts of the
text itself. Like the text is also very crammed and
crowded in. Yeah yeah, so, I mean maybe to the
original creators of this page and the original intended readers
of this page, like this is opening things up. They're like, hey,

(09:14):
I'm giving you some space. That's what the dog is,
That's what the the bird with the human head and
the dunce cap is about. That is a good bird.
It reminds me a bit um. And this is coming
back to like, you know, cinematic u um examples and
parody of cinematic examples. But there's an episode of Futurama

(09:34):
where Zoidbird's uncle Harold Zoid an old timey uh cinema
director who made like silent holographic pictures. Um, he's directing
a new film and he's at one point he's he says, people, people, please,
just because it's a dramatic scene doesn't mean you can't
do a little comedy in the background. Um. And it's

(09:55):
you know, it's referring to I guess the the you
know to To modern viewers, they often busy nature and
the frantic nature of say old silent films. Oh yeah, yeah.
So anyway, on this, like Walter's one thirteen, a person
might feel that this counts as horror akay in the
critical sense, in the sense of overmarking or excessive decoration

(10:16):
that sort of threatens to overwhelm that which is being decorated.
But to come back to my point about usage, it
seems that while some authors use the term exclusively in
this sense, like a in some sense a critical statement
or a critical statement about the motivation driving certain design choices,
it's also sometimes used more generically without a spirit of

(10:39):
criticism that I can detect, and would just be descriptive
like it would refer to any ardor design without a
lot of blank space, even if the author making the
statement believes that such a design is effective or thoughtful,
or well considered or beautiful. So I guess this can
create confusion when the term is invoked about whether it's

(11:00):
being used with a critical connotation or not. Is it
just say it does horror aka we just describe and
artwork that is busy and filled in with detail to
all the edges, or is it a class of motivation
to create certain artworks of this type, specifically artworks that
are not as good as others? Now? Um, you know,

(11:21):
discussing though the way that sometimes the term is used
to depict, you know, like primitive impulse, or or to
describe a quality of more ancient forms of art versus
modern forms. Um. I do think it's helpful to look
at at other examples from other parts of the world
at other times, and I was trying to think of, like, well,
what's a good one that's you know, a little bit

(11:42):
different from from what we've we've looked at in the
first episode, And I kept coming back to uh Tibetan art,
particularly in Tibetan Buddhist art that I imagine when I
even mentioned this, like certain images are coming to mind,
and these image is that come to mind maybe indeed
be like very full, very um complex pieces that indeed

(12:07):
take up an entire given space. So if we're applying
the term here, it would be in the descriptive sense,
not in the critical sense, because I think you and
I agree these artworks are amazing, right and and I
and I, to be honest, I didn't find any sources
out there that we're really invoking this term to describe
Tibettan art, So I'm not I'm not attempting to jump
to the defense of it or anything, because the attack

(12:29):
would be I think entirely imaginary here. But um, but
it's interesting, I think to look at at work that
you might see as as you know, very full or
even very busy and sort of described like why is
it like that? And uh and and what does it
have to do with the original purpose and context of
a given work? So a little background. Um. A Tibetan

(12:49):
style of art began to develop on the Tibetan Plateau
during the tenth century, this following a formative era during
which Buddhism took on a form in Tibet most in
tune with religious needs of the people, their pre existing
shamanistic traditions, and much more. Uh. And this is discussed
in great detail and an excellent book that I have
on the shelf here by Robert E. Fisher titled Art

(13:10):
of Tibet. Now, I'm not going to get super into
the different forms of Tibetan Buddhism or even the full
variety of images, but suffice to say that while not
all examples of Tibetan Buddhist aren't invoke a feeling of maximalism,
some of the most famous examples of sculpture, and especially
monastery wall paintings, do tend to kind of overpower you

(13:30):
with a sense of cosmic abundance. Yes, and many of
them seem to me like they are not only overflowing
with detail, but overflowing with uh sort of different levels
of focus. Like there's a lot of different layers of
detail that you know, things that are kind of like
zoomed out versus zoomed in, if that makes any sense. Yeah, Yeah,

(13:51):
you do feel like there's a sense of zooming in
and zooming out. Um. Many pieces will have like a
kind of central focus and you can almost feel like
some sort of of a map. It can almost feel
like some sort of and this is where we get
into some of the actual purpose here, some sort of
educational document that indeed there is information that is being

(14:12):
relayed here. Uh. And you know, this is one of
two important factors to keep in mind regarding why these
images are so again cosmically abundant. Uh. First of all,
is Fisher points out esoteric Buddhism, like Vadriyana, Buddhism was
andy as a complex system. One comparison that I've seen
elsewhere is that you might think of these forms of

(14:34):
Buddhism as a kind of Buddhist super science, a kind
of advanced spiritual technology. Fisher points out that it essentially
was was a means of accelerating the path toward enlightenment,
condensing the work of eons into a single mortal lifespan.
And at the same time, there was still like a
sense of urgency to the practice, Fisher stresses, because ultimately

(14:57):
you're dealing with like the trajectory of the human soul.
So there was a great deal to be taught, a
great deal to guide one through, a great deal as
a learner to absorb and it was more than a
written text or even a robust monastic tradition could do
on its own. Fisher rights of the following quote. The

(15:17):
need to harness the myriad powers and to organize the
parts of this vast system into a manageable whole required
a large and complex visual system of support and gave
rise to the ritual instruments and images that have given
the Adriana its distinctive flavor, as well as the huge
array of deities representing the tremendous range of powers and practices. Okay,

(15:41):
so in some sense, the detail rich nature of a
lot of this artwork could be related to the sort
of the vastness and complexity of the belief system underlying
it exactly. Yeah, Yeah, we're dealing with various images and
objects here that are not necessarily merely decoration but also

(16:04):
ritualistic and instructional. So the image may be like full
or abundant or or even uh, you know, considered busy,
because there is a great deal of information to relate
and support via the image, and I guess you know
you can you can look at various examples and other systems.
Like anytime, there's a lot of information to put in
an image, be it a map, um or you know,

(16:25):
to to sort of bring it into this realm of
the unreal. I'm reminded of the maps, the many wonderful
maps have been created over the years for Dante's Inferno
and Um and uh and and the other books in
the Divine Comedy, where there is a fantastic physical realm
that has to be created there, but it's also just

(16:46):
loaded with information and loaded with all sorts of stuff,
and it can be very helpful when you're, say, reading
The Inferno, but also if you try and fit everything
into the map, it could conceivably be overwhelming. Thank thank
thank now. Elsewhere in the book, Fisher makes a great

(17:08):
point to about the role place has in all of
this as well. So we're dealing with centuries of tradition
here and and um and while I don't want to
devalue the vast size of the Tibetan Plateau because it
is enormous, or the biodiversity of the region because it
contains numerous ecosystems, but individual works and monasteries are going

(17:28):
to be generally tied to particular locations within it. As
Fisher points out, the interior of the Tibetan monastery is
elaborate with full wall paintings that quote transform those rooms
into spiritual environments which surround and even overwhelmed the worshiper
with large, expressive displays of the many Buddhist worlds. And

(17:49):
he stresses that this is all in stark contrast to
the world outside the monastery, typically defined by the quote
often bear in wind swept Tibetan landsk um. That's interesting.
So he's saying that in many of these places, if
you were to go outside the monastery, you'd be greeted
with an image of the world that is quite beautiful,
but maybe not busy with detail or busy with lots

(18:12):
of little things populating it. It It would be often a
very I don't know what the word is, A kind
of smooth topography. I mean, I guess not smooth, because
it would be mountainous, but you know, not a lot
of uh forests and cities and so forth. Right, Yeah,
Like I included an image here of the Debatten Plateau,
and it's particularly gorgeous view. And at the same time,

(18:34):
I'm sure that one could probably find individual vistas uh
that don't feel is open in the Debat Plateau but
but I feel like this kind of I feel like
this has a certain logic to it, like the idea that,
first of all, going back to the previous comment, like,
on one hand, you have information encoded in the work,
but also it has to do with this awe inspiring

(18:56):
transition out of the mundane world and into the inner
spiritual world of the monastery or the temple. So I think,
on one hand, it's it's important to realize that the
contrast between the empty and the full might be lost
in an analysis of a work, you know, if you're
just viewing it in isolation on a page, um, on
a screen, or even in a you know, a museum setting.

(19:18):
Um and uh. And I don't know if this is
more of a tangent, but I wonder how we might
think of this in terms of ancient versus modern, or
even in just pre modern in general versus modern creations,
because if the world outside of a particular experience is,
by one definition or another minimalist, then perhaps it makes
more sense for the work uh itself, the inner work

(19:39):
to present a contrast of maximalism. Likewise, of the world
outside the monastery is by one definition or another maximalist
or busy, then perhaps we crave the quiet, the simple,
and the minimal within the experience of place or painting
or film or musical composition. That's very interesting, I could
see that. So if yeah, if you may you live

(20:00):
in a in a busy city center, the sacred space
you retreat to, you would want to have a lot
of empty or uniform space in it to give you
a sense of of rest maybe, Whereas if you live
in a more pastoral environment, you might want to retreat
to a sacred space that is full of just a busy,
rich detail and complexity. Yeah. And at the same time, though,

(20:21):
I realize that it might still be entirely subjective, because
I can easily imagine, say, you know, an individual living
in the big city and they're going into a a
sacred space or museum space, and like, what is their
relationship to the world on the outside is is it
is it busy and um an abundant or is it

(20:42):
is there an emptiness to it? And therefore they want
something more full on the inside, like the sacred space
should give them an energy that they feel is lacking
in the world outside. Uh, Like I, like I said,
I guess it could go either way. Depending on what
an individual's view of the mundane world is. Yeah, that
that's a really interesting observation, though, I wonder about that now. Yeah,

(21:05):
like take the various male wolf locations for example, those
are those are certainly kind of maximalist experiences you don't
go in. I mean, you know, it's it's it's not
just an overabundance of images. There's you know, various artists,
various styles and so forth. Um, it's not just wall
to wall. But generally I have found when I when

(21:27):
I in the one that I visited, I left feeling
like I had experienced a lot. That's interesting because I
when I went I found it kind of RESTful as well.
I think maybe it has to do with the dim
lighting in there or there there are plenty of lights,
but they're not bright white light. Um, and uh in
the kind of soothing sonic atmospheres. I don't know. Yeah,

(21:50):
So anyway, you know, I bring all this up more
or less just raise additional questions and bring up additional examples.
But we'd obviously love to hear from folks out there
who have thoughts on all of this related to their
experiences in museums and sacred spaces, etcetera. Now, I mentioned
earlier that I was going to come back to chet
VanDuzer Uh, and this relates to fear of the void

(22:12):
in art. I came across some work by previous show
guest chet Van Duser on the role of horror vakawi
in map making. So if you didn't hear that episode
from a few years back, chet vand User is an
American historian of cartography, and he came on the show
several years back to talk about why and how cartographers

(22:32):
of the past would so frequently add sea monsters to
their maps, and one possible explanation for the proliferation of
sirens and slyly marine serpent kings out in the deep
water is horror vakaye on the part of the map maker.
This would be the version that's not just merely descriptive

(22:53):
of something that's filling in details, but a description of
a motivation on the part of the artist or map maker.
The uh. There's an abhorrence for blankness that goes in
the case of maps, beyond just the creation of monsters,
but to all kinds of extraneous infilling of stuff in
the watery corners of the page. Or in the deep

(23:13):
middles of continents on the page, and so I was
looking at a digital curation of examples on the Stanford
Libraries website. This is for the Barry Lawrence Rudermann Conference
on Cartography, and there are some explanatory materials by Chet
van Douser. So he writes that despite the fact that
some previous scholars had had cast doubt on whether horror

(23:36):
akawee was ever a major influence on map makers, he
argues that whether you frame it as a positive desire
for excess decoration or a negative aversion to blank space,
it seems pretty clear that horror akawee of one kind
or another was an important pressure in the design of
European maps from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century,

(23:57):
at least four some cartographers. Because this was not universal,
he also shows many examples of maps that were perfectly
content to leave vast areas blank, often the the interiors
of continental spaces unknown to the map maker, or vast
ocean spaces. Now, rob I thought the first example vendors
are selects that we would look at. Here is the

(24:19):
typus aurarum mary timarum gin a a longren and this
is a map created by the Dutch cartographer Young Hoygan
von lynn Schoten, who lived fifteen sixty three to sixteen eleven.
I believe this map is from fifte and it depicts
the South Atlantic and the western coast of Africa. Now

(24:44):
the ocean takes up it looks like at least three
quarters of the map. But the ocean here is absolutely
overflowing with stuff, to the point that it's kind of
funny to look at. There are inset drawings of the
mountains on St. Helena and a inshin island. There is
a compass or multiple compasses. There is a drawing of

(25:05):
three ships being visited by a sea monster. I can't
tell if the c monster is attacking the ships or
just saying hello, Rob. Maybe you can render a judgment
on that illustration in a moment. But there is also
lots of absurdly florid lettering on the names of places.
Will you just look at this oceanus? Uh what? I
can't even read the word it's so there's so much

(25:28):
swirling on the letters. Get get, let's let the podcasts
or something. Yeah, there's a lot going on here. And
the I mean, it almost looks like you've you've gotten
you've got pop ups occurring on the map. You need
to close out so you can see the rest of
the ocean here. That's very yeah, yeah, you want to
click the excess. Uh, but let's get a good look

(25:52):
at this sea monster. Now, it looks kind of like
it's a giant green fish with red fins and the
head of I don't know, what would you call that,
kind of like a pig calf head. Yeah, yeah, it's
very mammalion. But it's got the angry eyes it's got
it's got attack eyes. And is it attacking the ships
or is it just kind of flopping around for them

(26:14):
to look at? Not quite clear. Yeah, I don't know.
It looks it looks, I don't looks a little sweet
to me, like it's just kind of mine in its
own business. But maybe no, no, wait, I'm looking at
It depends how you Okay, it depends how you look
at it. At first, when I looked at this this
particular monster, I thought its head was sort of to
the side, And now I see it as it was intended. Yes,

(26:34):
it does look angry and looks more like a pig.
Whereas the way I was seeing it at first it
looked more like an otter. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I
saw that you were looking at the more zoomed out
image that does look more otter like. Yeah, but when
you you see a little closer, you can tell, yeah,
it has this kind of still mammalion but angry and
perhaps threatening the ships. But okay, this first example, there

(26:56):
is just so much illustration in the ocean here, and
just a lot inset text. The boxes boxes of text.
I think they're called cartouches, maybe, just like elaborately decorated
boxes with like those baroque museum frames illustrated around them
that have you know, they say something in them. Uh. Now,
let's look at another map. This is one that of

(27:19):
and user selects that is called a New Plane and
Exact Map of America by Robert Walton who lived sixteen
eighteen to sixty eight. I think this map is from
sixteen sixty and uh, let me flag a little lall
here at the word plane in its title, because again,

(27:39):
it's just it's so much stuff. The oceans are filled
with ships, sea monsters, random blocks of text. The border
of the map is stuffed with illustrations of landmarks and
explorers and what the map maker believed were the representations
of clothing of various native people's. There is even sort

(28:01):
of a guess at the coast of Antarctica, though I
want to say Antarctica was not discovered until the nineteenth century.
This is just a random line of coasts south of
Cape Horn that has labeled unknown lands. So it's just
sort of a guess there's probably some land down here. Wow.
This Yeah, this map is a lot to take in. UM.

(28:22):
I wouldn't say that it's particularly pleasing to the eye.
It has the feeling of a publication like UM in
the sense that they said, well, we've got some extra
space on here, let's get some more content on this map.
You know what it looks. It kind of looks like
do you ever have those highly informational place mats when
you were a kid? Yep, yep, you're gonna eat your

(28:44):
spaghetti on this new plane exact map of America. Yeah,
this would work great as a place matter. Yeah. Yes.
But Van dews Are, writing of Walton's map, says quote,
it is tempting to think that the maps busy appearance
attracted and held the is of his customers and thus
helped increase sales. So that's an interesting consideration. It's possible

(29:07):
that a desire to sell maps could have driven some
horror vakay in cartographers, because maybe a map seems more
valuable if it is filled with lots of illustrations and text.
Maybe it seems less valuable if the places where you
you know, you don't really have any geographical information to

(29:28):
add or just blank Yeah. I can see. It's kind
of like with the illuminated manuscripts. So we're discussing earlier.
I mean, if you were paying for one of these
or commissioning, when you might say, hey, I thought this
thing was going to be illuminated. Where is the illumination
I paid for? Um? Yeah, and there's a lot of
content added here. And yet at the same time, the
north part of America has a fair amount of white space,

(29:50):
trap white space in it here. Oh it does. Yeah,
that that's the the interior continent. In fact, some of
the other examples elsewhere that VanDuzer sites to show cases
where map makers were clearly not afraid to leave blank space.
A lot of that blank spaces, like in the center
of the Asian continent, so they'll represent you know, Europe
and Africa, and like the southern coast of the Asian mainland,

(30:14):
and then like all up inside there, it's just a
vast blankness because they just didn't know what was there. Yeah,
it looked like in this particular map they added some
text under the north part of America, but they just
didn't have even enough to fill. I have a few
pictures of animals, but ultimately there's a clearly a lot
of a lot that's unknown at the time of this

(30:35):
naps making. Thankank, Thank alright, I want to look at
one more of Van Duzer's examples. The next one is
a map by Henri Abraham Chatelan called I'm not sure
how to say this French, but I think it's like
cart trey cure use de la mare de Sud. This

(30:59):
is Amsterdam, seventeen nineteen. So this is more like an
attempt to This is not quite a map of the
entire world, but it is a map of a lot
of the world. So it has North America, South America,
half of Africa, half of Europe, and then the eastern
part of the Asian continent. And then it's got a

(31:20):
lot of ocean in it. So it's got the Pacific Ocean,
the Atlantic ocean, and once again there's all kinds of
stuff sort of crowding in from the edges. In fact, Rob,
I would almost say this adheres to the exact inverse
of your rule about about blank space in like type
setting newspapers, where you know, white space was okay if

(31:40):
it's sort of connected to the oceans at the outer
edge of the page. You just don't want trapped white
space here. All of the illustrations and boxes and Cartouchian
seemed to be just pouring in from the edges of
the map, if that makes sense. Yeah, Yeah, it's it's
it's it's very interesting to look at. And yeah, and
I'm sure lot of this has to do with the

(32:01):
clearly visible trade routes that are marked, like you don't
want to throw your copious amounts of illustrations on top
of that better, but they work well to fill in
these areas where ships are not navigating between the continents. Yeah,
and I really like Vanduzer's observation about this map quote
the great profusion of inset maps and scenes along the
northern and southern edges of Andrichdalan seventeen nineteen very curious

(32:26):
map of the Pacific show the cartographer's strong desire to
avoid empty space, and more specifically, to conceal his ignorance
of what lay in the extreme northern and southern reaches
of the world. The south is essentially tiled over with
inset maps that include ethnographic scenes in the north. Note

(32:46):
that he conceals his ignorance of northwestern North America with
a series of portraits of explorers. That's a very clever trick,
and honestly, I don't know if I would have noticed
it if induser hadn't pointed out. Sometimes an abundance of
extraneous detail can be used to distract the audience from

(33:08):
the absence of significant or useful detail. In other words,
business can be used to hide emptiness. So on a map,
this would mean that you might be less inclined to,
you know, pipe up and say, hey, wait a minute,
what islands can be found in this region of the
Pacific Ocean, Or wait a minute, what is the shape

(33:29):
of the northwest coast of North America. You might not
notice to ask that question because the map doesn't just
sort of like go blank in these places. Instead, it
is plastered with like Magellan and Vespucci heads and what
appeared to be somewhat inaccurate drawings of Mesoamerican pyramids with
human sacrifices happening all around them. So it's just adding

(33:52):
in these illustrations in places where the author or or
the map maker uh doesn't actually know what they should
depict in an informational sense in the map itself. Yes,
this close up that you included for me of the
human sacrifice scene is quite ridiculous and monstrous. And I
guess thee an individual with a face on his stomach

(34:14):
in the background as well. Is that what it is? Yeah,
that's confusing. I don't know what that means. Yeah, I
mean when he shows up? You know your illustration is
is is well off the mark when it comes to
realistic depiction of cultural practices. Is this going to help
me navigate the Pacific? I'm not sure, but this will
come back in a minute. Maybe that's not the point

(34:35):
of a map like this, um though, I think it's
important to to dwell in this for a second, because,
of course, this technique of hiding the lack of significant
or relevant detail by filling the void with irrelevant or
extraneous detail is not just used in maps. This is
actually something I notice in verbal rhetoric all the time.

(34:57):
It is like a common trick of persuasion in an argumentation. Uh.
For example, you can see see it in courtrooms if
you don't have very good evidence to cite in support
of your case. Instead, you just say a lot of stuff.
You just try to rapidly lay out a bunch of
facts or claims that sound vaguely on topic. And if

(35:19):
you say enough stuff fast enough, it could be hard
for the jury or the audience to stop and analyze
each thing you said and think, wait a minute, does
this actually prove what you're trying to prove? Is? Does
this lead to your conclusion? Instead, like you use a
blizzard of statements to create the impression that you have
made an argument, you hide the core vacuity of your

(35:41):
case behind a hieronymous bosh painting of talk. Mm hmm.
Perhaps it's kind of like with the map versus the painting.
It's more detectable when there's like a definite purpose or
intended purpose to the answer, because it's like one thing
to come up to someone and say, hey, what is art?
And then you might get a really rambling response, but

(36:03):
you kind of should right, But if it's more like, hey, um,
if you come to your boss and be like, what
are my duties for the coming month or how is
my performance over the last quarter, if there are a
lot of add ons and pop ups in that particular answer,
then yeah, it feels like you didn't really get a
clear answer to the question. Yes. Yes, In that case,

(36:24):
the boss would be papering over an actual problem in
the workplace with a bunch of extraneous detail, essentially painting
like Magellan heads and Christopher Columbus heads over the part
of the map where you should be getting detail about
what you're supposed to do. Yeah, But anyway to come
back to maps specifically, uh Van Duser argues that eventually
the cartography of horror vakuwi fell out of fashion by

(36:47):
the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. You start to
see a decline in this impulse to fill every corner
of the map with stuff, and that seems to coincide
with a decline in decoration generally and an increasing trend
of seeing maps purely as utilitarian scientific instruments, where it
would just be you know, you just want the information necessary.

(37:09):
These are the navigation lines you would use. These are
the coastlines. So I look at all this and I
sort of interpret it to mean that, you know, in
in European maps of centuries prior, if you had a
map of the coast of South America or something, it's
maybe more likely that this would be a kind of decorative, educational,
or status item to maybe to stimulate the imagination, or

(37:32):
maybe in a more profane sense, to show off your
wealth and worldliness or something like that. But by the
early eighteenth century, c maps were increasingly viewed simply as
tools for navigation, in which case you might not want
a lot of extra decoration all over the place, kind
of like you wouldn't want the marked face of a

(37:53):
tape measure to be covered in all kinds of elaborate
illustrations and words. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a great
It reminds me a bit of time pieces, particularly wrist watches,
where you know you'll you'll see plenty of examples of
very functional time pieces that are all about giving you
the exact time, and in other cases the time piece
might be a little more stylistic, sometimes so stylistic that

(38:15):
it interferes with your ability to accurately read what time
it is. Yes, and It's not to say that either
approach is wrong. They just have different slightly different intentions
and a different focus on the actual information that is
being presented. So this makes me think that when there
is a case of horror vakawy as a motivation, just

(38:35):
like a desire to fill in blank spaces with stuff,
you know, there can actually be a lot of uh,
sort of sub motivations to that motivation. It might be
because you are trying to make the thing you're creating
appear more valuable. Maybe you're trying to attract the eye
of a buyer. It might be because you literally just

(38:56):
want to contain more information. It might be because you
want to disguise a lack of information of a significant sort.
Or maybe it's just because you enjoy being artistically expressive
and you want to fill lots of things in with
you know, just kind of exciting detail to stimulate the imagination,
all of which could essentially manifest as the same thing. Yeah,

(39:19):
but how about you personally, Joe, do you think maps
today should have more monsters on them? I think Google
Maps specifically should have more monsters on it, uh, Like,
you know, because that could be that could be filled
in dynamically, right, you know the monsters are roaming around.
That would add an interesting level of puzzle and obstacles
here your daily boring navigation tasks. I gotta get to

(39:40):
so and so's house or the post office or whatever,
but there is a Leviathan in the way, and uh,
maybe I gotta take a new route. Yeah, I mean,
just speaking of routes. Yeah, we have we we use
these various GPS powered mapping devices when we drive around,
and I often find that if I stop at a

(40:01):
light or a traffic sign. Uh, that's when the pop
ups come for make pop ups for like sub sandwich
shops and so forth. Uh. Maybe if I could pay
just a little bit each month instead of getting the
sub the submarine sandwich pop up, I could just get
a random monster from uh from from the history of maps,
some sort of strange, pig faced, shrek eared monstrosity rising

(40:24):
up out of the highway. Yeah. Why go to the
sub shop when you could go be devoured by a cockatrice? Yeah,
or at least giving the ability to report it. If
enough people are reporting the thing, then there must be
something going on. Okay, does that do it for today?
For Part two, I believe. So yeah, I think we've
we've we've filled this one into the margins here, but

(40:44):
we'll be back with a third episode on the topic,
so hey, check back with us. Then. Just a reminder
that core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind air
and Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays
and Thursdays. On Monday's we do listener mail, on Wednesday's
we do a short form amster fact or artifact episode,
and on Friday's we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

(41:07):
Huge thanks to our audio producer J J. Pauseway. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
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

(41:31):
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