Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time for
Speaker 2: an episode from the Vault. This one originally published January seventeenth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, and it's the first part in our
Speaker 2: series on horror vakue the fear of the Void. Hope
Speaker 2: you enjoy.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to
Speaker 2: be starting up a series on the subject of horror VAKUI,
Speaker 2: which can be translated directly as fear of the void,
Speaker 2: but has also been paraphrased in the form of the
Speaker 2: statement nature of horrors of vacuum. Now, I think this
Speaker 2: is going to be a great subject for us because
Speaker 2: this principle has facets that appear in art, psychology, and
Speaker 2: all kinds of other domains. But it's often traced all
Speaker 2: the way back in its origin to the scientific writings
Speaker 2: of Aristotle in the fourth century BCE, though Aristotle did
Speaker 2: not use exactly this phrase, of course, how could he.
Speaker 2: It's Latin, but he did argue in his book on
Speaker 2: Physics that the concept of a vacuum in nature was
Speaker 2: implausible and in fact even worthy of ridicule. So this
Speaker 2: occurs in Aristotle's famous Physics. This is book four, part eight,
Speaker 2: though his attempted refutation of vacuum physics spans several sections.
Speaker 2: I think it's like parts six through nine of the
Speaker 2: book or so. And it's interesting that Aristotle does not
Speaker 2: approach this subject from first principles, but instead he approaches
Speaker 2: it by entering an ongoing debate among other philosophers where
Speaker 2: there's a camp arguing against the existence of empty space,
Speaker 2: and that apparently contains figures like Enexagoras, and then there's
Speaker 2: a camp that argues for the existence of empty space,
Speaker 2: and that contains the Pythagorean school and others. So, in
Speaker 2: trying to stake his own claim in this controversy, Aristotle
Speaker 2: makes the argument that the existence of empty space is
Speaker 2: logically incoherent, and this leads to a harsh joke at
Speaker 2: the expense of space itself. He writes, but even if
Speaker 2: we consider it on its own merits, the so called
Speaker 2: vacuum will be found to be really vacuous. Ah, that
Speaker 2: might be funny or in ancient Greek. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: So I think we'll come back specifically to the history
Speaker 2: of horror vacui in physics in a subsequent part in
Speaker 2: this series. But I thought this was a good place
Speaker 2: to start because a lot of people seem to trace
Speaker 2: this general idea back to Aristotle, and they often identify
Speaker 2: him as sort of the grandfather of this tradition of
Speaker 2: being intolerant of empty space or of the very idea
Speaker 2: of emptiness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just the whole idea that nature abhors a
Speaker 1: vacuum like it's You could also kind of translate it as, hey,
Speaker 1: anytime there's a place where stuff isn't but stuff could be, well,
Speaker 1: guess where you're can eventually find stuff right there, and
Speaker 1: you know you could. You can apply that to economics,
Speaker 1: you can apply it to evolution because for the most part,
Speaker 1: like various interpretations of that hold very true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And of course there are tons of examples in
Speaker 2: physics where you can identify this sort of phenomenonomy. If,
Speaker 2: for example, entropy particle entropy. If you take a rectangular
Speaker 2: container and half of it is filled with gas and
Speaker 2: the other half has no gas in it. If you
Speaker 2: just like let it go on its own and do
Speaker 2: nothing to it, eventually the gas will even out in
Speaker 2: distribution and fill the entire container. That something about nature
Speaker 2: seems to reject that that arbitrary starting point of division
Speaker 2: and tends to just have everything spread out even out.
Speaker 2: It doesn't want to let that emptiness remain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or on the other end of the spectrum, if
Speaker 1: you have an empty drawer or cabinet in your kitchen,
Speaker 1: see how long that lasts. Because eventually, eventually something's going
Speaker 1: to come along and it's going to be the perfect
Speaker 1: place to stick it.
Speaker 2: Right. But one big place where horror vakui has been
Speaker 2: recognized throughout the years is in the world.
Speaker 1: Of art, that's right. Yeah, And in this we get
Speaker 1: into we have this softer treatment of the vacuum of
Speaker 1: empty spaces and also a lot of i think ultimately
Speaker 1: discussions or arguments over what constitutes an empty space and
Speaker 1: so forth. But yeah, within the worlds of art and design,
Speaker 1: horror vacuie basically comes down to a tendency to fill
Speaker 1: blank spaces instead of leaving them empty. I've also seen
Speaker 1: it argued as a kind of maximal as opposing minimalism.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's like like I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: create this painting or you know, think of it. I
Speaker 1: guess from a like like a street art graffiti kind
Speaker 1: of standpoint. What am I going to paint on this wall?
Speaker 1: And how much of this wall am I going to paint? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to paint all of it, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to fill it with with just so many things? Or
Speaker 1: are you is it going to be mostly sort of
Speaker 1: a blank canvas drawing your attention to the one I
Speaker 1: don't know songbird that you've created at the middle of
Speaker 1: this street canvas.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, for my own part, and I imagine everyone out
Speaker 1: there has some version of this, But for my own part,
Speaker 1: my mind quickly goes to a few different handy examples.
Speaker 1: Some of my favorite artists do seem to abhor the
Speaker 1: vacuum on some level. For instance, I've long been a
Speaker 1: fan of the dark surrealism of Irving Norman, and his
Speaker 1: work tended to consist of very complex, crowded, dynamic expanses
Speaker 1: that had a lot of like urban and industrial energy
Speaker 1: to them, And so it has a lot of chaos,
Speaker 1: It has a lot of soullessness, and a lot of
Speaker 1: it is about sort of capturing the spirit as he
Speaker 1: saw it of the modern world.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's interesting that the connection to modernity, because I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people over the years have made
Speaker 2: this argument that something about how culture changes over time,
Speaker 2: maybe a lot of this is driven by technology, results
Speaker 2: in the constant sort of ingress of stuff into more
Speaker 2: and more previously unfilled spaces of your attentional life. So
Speaker 2: whereas life used to, at least according to this argument,
Speaker 2: involve a lot more kind of boredom and idleness and
Speaker 2: sort of sitting around with your own thoughts, not having
Speaker 2: anything to do, and things like that, now there's just
Speaker 2: like always something to occupy you and occupy your attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and his works in particular, they do have this
Speaker 1: feeling too them the one I included for you to
Speaker 1: look at here, and certainly listeners can look this piece
Speaker 1: up as well. This is war and Peace. It's a triptych.
Speaker 1: And this is the piece that I've gotten to see
Speaker 1: in person that was on display in San Francisco at
Speaker 1: least for a while. Big piece, and a piece like
Speaker 1: this is great to see in person as well because
Speaker 1: you get to sort of get a little closer and
Speaker 1: check out some of the many details that make it up.
Speaker 1: For instance, one of the pieces here, you see all
Speaker 1: these buildings in it, like a surrealistic view of skyscrapers,
Speaker 1: in each little window has somebody inside with like some
Speaker 1: sort of pained or horrific or bored expression on their face.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he really seems to fill every available space
Speaker 1: with some sort of detail. Now, there are plenty of
Speaker 1: older artists that come to mind, you know, pre modern
Speaker 1: artist like Hieronymous Bosch comes to mind, Peter Brugle the Elder.
Speaker 1: Another contemporary example that I instantly think of would be
Speaker 1: the visionary art of Alex Gray, you know, very psychedelic,
Speaker 1: but also just filled with flow and color, and there's
Speaker 1: just this sense of every available space has been sort
Speaker 1: of engulfed by energies that cannot normally be viewed with
Speaker 1: the naked eye.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now you raise Hieronymous Bosh, and that really got
Speaker 2: my gears cranking, because when it comes to horror, Vacui
Speaker 2: and Bosh. I could be wrong, but I sense a
Speaker 2: trend in his religious paintings where there's an association of
Speaker 2: busyness with bad things, with chaos and sin, whereas empty
Speaker 2: space seems to be more associated with order and godliness
Speaker 2: and righteousness. So Hell is bustling and full and just
Speaker 2: teeming with activity, whereas Heaven, or maybe the garden at
Speaker 2: Eden before the Fall, is orderly and clean and has
Speaker 2: plenty of empty space, plenty of floor space. One example,
Speaker 2: of course, I think of here is the triptych The
Speaker 2: Last Judgment, where if you see, you know, the Garden
Speaker 2: of Eden, apparently a time before sin, there's just a
Speaker 2: lot of kind of empty ground. There's like not a
Speaker 2: lot going on. There's there's plenty of expanses that have
Speaker 2: yet to be filled with anything. And also if you
Speaker 2: look at the middle panel of the triptych, there is
Speaker 2: war and chaos and suffering and disease and violence and
Speaker 2: stuff taking place down on Earth, and it's a very
Speaker 2: busy scene. But up above you see Christ and the
Speaker 2: angels and everything's very clean, and there's like not a
Speaker 2: whole lot going on. There's a lot of empty space
Speaker 2: up in the sky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a great point.
Speaker 2: So in a way I wonder if that's kind of
Speaker 2: an inverse horror vacuee, where you know that like the
Speaker 2: the vakue is actually the indicator of goodness and orderliness,
Speaker 2: and you know, when there's too much stuff going on,
Speaker 2: that's a sign that something has gone wrong, that order
Speaker 2: has broken down. But clearly this is not a universal
Speaker 2: association within art or even within religious art. For example,
Speaker 2: Dante's Paradiso seems to be anything but empty. You know,
Speaker 2: the heavens in that vision are crammed with overwhelming, incomprehensibly
Speaker 2: busy stimuli. There's you know, a lot of things where
Speaker 2: He's just like, there was so much I couldn't understand
Speaker 2: what I was looking at. And in some versions of
Speaker 2: gnosticism also the sort of ultimate ideal plane of reality
Speaker 2: and the sum of all divine potential is called the pleroma,
Speaker 2: which in Greek means fullness, the opposite of emptiness or void.
Speaker 1: Your example of here from the last judgment, this made
Speaker 1: me think about okay, and at least in the middle
Speaker 1: part of it, you're talking about, you know, here we
Speaker 1: have a Christ appearing in the sky and everything's a
Speaker 1: little more open, and we see the blue and ultimately
Speaker 1: the white of naked sky there. And I was comparing
Speaker 1: this to some other words that I'll mention in a second,
Speaker 1: but it made me wonder like, when is the sky
Speaker 1: full and when is the sky empty? Because it seems
Speaker 1: like on some level, a blue or white sky of
Speaker 1: painting is certainly a different animal compared to say, a
Speaker 1: red sky, in the same way that the standard wall
Speaker 1: color for a museum is usually, at least today not
Speaker 1: black or red, but a nice white or a muted gray.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, like a night sky is
Speaker 1: not necessarily like the darkness of space is not necessarily
Speaker 1: understood to be full, but I guess it could be
Speaker 1: depending on how you look in it's certainly full of.
Speaker 2: Stars, yeah, and specifically, I mean the skies are, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're rendered in very different ways. I mean sometimes the
Speaker 2: stars themselves are very busy, I think of I guess
Speaker 2: this is obvious to go to. But the starry night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And as far as Dante goes, I instantly
Speaker 1: thought back to Gustav Doreys later much later illustrations of
Speaker 1: the Divine Comedy, And sometimes those do and sometimes they
Speaker 1: don't match up with this general idea. Like there's one
Speaker 1: particularly famous image from Dore's illustrations where we see see
Speaker 1: Dante and his guy who's his guide in Paradiso.
Speaker 2: It's in the Paradiso, it's it's Beatrice.
Speaker 1: Yes, Beatrice, Yes, that's right. So it's it's Dante and Beatrice,
Speaker 1: and here in front of them is just this incomprehensible uh.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like the eye of Sauron with with
Speaker 1: just multitudes of swirling angelic beings all around it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're looking into just a tunnel made of
Speaker 2: like nanotechnology, except it's it's all angel wings.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then there's another one of Dore's illustrations where
Speaker 1: we see Dante and be standing here on a cloud
Speaker 1: and we see multiple rings of angels, and certainly there
Speaker 1: are a lot of angels in each ring, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot more open space, particularly above them, and there's
Speaker 1: an openness to that image that you don't see in
Speaker 1: a lot of the Dore illustrations of any of the
Speaker 1: three realms of the Divine Comedy.
Speaker 2: Agreed, And so that that division seems to be a
Speaker 2: you know, whether you want to represent beauty and holiness
Speaker 2: as a kind of incredibly busy phenomenon or as something
Speaker 2: with a lot of empty space in it. I don't
Speaker 2: see an overwhelming trend one way or the other. I mean,
Speaker 2: it seems like a sort of a pretty evenly divided
Speaker 2: issue of preference, because I think of tons of paintings
Speaker 2: from all throughout history and all throughout different cultures where
Speaker 2: empty space is clearly the thing that makes the painting
Speaker 2: so beautiful or the art so beautiful. One that came
Speaker 2: to my mind while we were getting ready for this
Speaker 2: episode was there's a Chinese work of art from I
Speaker 2: think the thirteenth century called on a Mountain Path in
Speaker 2: Spring by Ma Yuan. Do you know that one?
Speaker 1: Rob, I have just pulled it up in front of me. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is beautiful. I'm not familiar with this space.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One thing I really like about it, so to
Speaker 2: try to describe it, It shows like a man on a
Speaker 2: path and there are sort of like some trees drooping
Speaker 2: over around him, and there's a bird in flight up
Speaker 2: ahead of him, and you see the the ridges of
Speaker 2: some mountains in the background in one half of the painting.
Speaker 2: But one thing I really love about this painting is
Speaker 2: that essentially only half of it is filled in. So
Speaker 2: behind the man you see the outlines of all these forms.
Speaker 2: There are tree trunks, and there's the path. You see
Speaker 2: little you know, ridges and indentations in the ground and
Speaker 2: tree roots and shrubs, and you see the mountains in
Speaker 2: the background, and then in the other half of the painting,
Speaker 2: essentially all the forms just disappear and it's almost entirely
Speaker 2: empty space except for a little suggestion of the path
Speaker 2: continuing along on the ground and a bird.
Speaker 1: H Yeah. Yeah, it's a beautiful piece, you know. And
Speaker 1: I also want to mention that many of the artists
Speaker 1: that one might point to and say, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: someone who definitely abhors the vacuum. They're definitely a maximalist.
Speaker 1: You can also find plenty of examples where they play
Speaker 1: with opening things up a little bit. Like even just
Speaker 1: looking back through some of Irving Norman's works, like there
Speaker 1: are some pieces where have fairly sizable expanses of say sky,
Speaker 1: sometimes blue sky, other times extremely blood red skies, but
Speaker 1: sky nonetheless.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. I don't know what this is. So my ruined,
Speaker 2: vulgar mind looks at one of these paintings, the one
Speaker 2: with the red sky, and I just think hell razor two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it, it is a hellish image. It
Speaker 1: does have some of those vibes to it, for sure.
Speaker 2: I think it's that the red sky and then the
Speaker 2: sort of like maze of walls beneath that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, this one is called war Wounded Ends. That's
Speaker 1: another one of my favorite pieces by Irving Norman.
Speaker 2: It is beautiful. I apologize for the Barker comparison.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I mean I think it's apt. I
Speaker 1: mentioned the walls of a museum earlier because I think
Speaker 1: this is also key as well, because when you think
Speaker 1: of gallery walls and even picture frames in a modern sense,
Speaker 1: we tend to think of a very minimalist features. Right.
Speaker 1: The trend nowadays at least, is, of course, the display
Speaker 1: works of art in unassuming frames on largely blank walls,
Speaker 1: with at least some amount of space between each work,
Speaker 1: sort to allow each work a little room to breathe.
Speaker 1: But this was of course not always the fashion, and
Speaker 1: isn't always the fashion. Maximalist and minimalist approaches are just
Speaker 1: trends and ensure that the complex wallpaper may be pulled
Speaker 1: away in the geometric wall to wall carpeting may be
Speaker 1: ripped up from space, but given enough time, these things
Speaker 1: may come back into fashion again and you'll get even
Speaker 1: crazier wallpaper plastered back up and even more complex carpet
Speaker 1: installed Wallda wall. But there are some interesting properties involved,
Speaker 1: like what does it do when you have something worth
Speaker 1: looking at in the midst of white space? You know,
Speaker 1: what does emptiness? What does the void do? And there's
Speaker 1: an offsded quote from art historian Ernst Gombrich who of
Speaker 1: nineteen oh nine through two thousand and one, in which
Speaker 1: he stated, quote, the richer the elements of the frame,
Speaker 1: the more the center will gain in dignity. I believe
Speaker 1: this is a part of his theory of perception, and
Speaker 1: I think it's a pretty insightful statement, and we can
Speaker 1: apply it to the blank walls behind a canvas, to
Speaker 1: the unassuming picture frame, or even elements within a given
Speaker 1: work where the busy aspects of a piece focus our
Speaker 1: attention towards something more open, like for instance, Christ floating
Speaker 1: in the sky above said this otherwise chaotic scene and
Speaker 1: a painting by Bosh.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's kind of interesting. So that might explain the
Speaker 2: popularity of these very ornate, highly textured you know, frames
Speaker 2: around paintings with all these ridges and swirls and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and certainly you will often encounter, even in modern
Speaker 1: museums sometimes these older pieces that are still in very
Speaker 1: ornate frames, And I'm always interested in that because, I
Speaker 1: guess because it kind of throws me for a curve
Speaker 1: comparing it to more modern works and modern framing. And
Speaker 1: then you'll encounter this piece that have some sort of
Speaker 1: a picture frame that I mean could arguably be seen
Speaker 1: as distracting from the piece itself, but maybe not maybe
Speaker 1: guiding you in now. As far as the term horror
Speaker 1: evacue goes, depending on tastes and trends, you'll see it
Speaker 1: in the art world, sometimes invoked as praise, other times
Speaker 1: invoked as criticism. Take the often busy art of Jackson
Speaker 1: Pollock of nineteen twelve through nineteen fifty six. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a prime example of this duality. Even though not
Speaker 1: all of his works abhor the vacuum, You'll you'll find
Speaker 1: a little space in some of his pieces, and I
Speaker 1: think maybe those are the ones that I may be
Speaker 1: a little more drawn to.
Speaker 2: Oh, but you mean that like critics had described it
Speaker 2: in terms of horror vakue, both positively and negatively, like
Speaker 2: this is good because it sates my horror vakuy, or
Speaker 2: this is bad because it's just a product of horror vacuy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I think in the case of Pollock,
Speaker 1: and people are more familiar with art criticism out there
Speaker 1: than they can chime in on this. But it seems
Speaker 1: like you see it invoked more as a criticism, you know,
Speaker 1: almost like, well, this clearly this artist is afraid of
Speaker 1: the vacuum. Otherwise they would have given us a little
Speaker 1: more space. But I don't know, even the really busy
Speaker 1: Jackson Pollock pieces, which I think I have also had
Speaker 1: the chance to see in person, Some of these pieces,
Speaker 1: like they're really neat to see in person, because you
Speaker 1: do get it's a similar situation. You can take it
Speaker 1: all in, but you can step a little closer and
Speaker 1: sort of look at just some of the closer details,
Speaker 1: and it's really enthralling.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The term has also been used to describe cultural artistic traditions.
Speaker 1: I've seen it used to describe the work of the
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptians, as well as the trend in Islamic art
Speaker 1: towards the expansive use of geometric patterns. Apparently, however, the
Speaker 1: originator of the term in art criticism itself was Italian
Speaker 1: born art and literature critic Mario Praz who lived eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety six through nineteen eighty two, who used it mostly
Speaker 1: to slam the cluttered visual interior design one sees particularly
Speaker 1: in Victorian households. Victorian design. Joe I included a sort
Speaker 1: of stereotypical image of a rich Victorian sitting room here,
Speaker 1: and I think it raises the question is this too
Speaker 1: busy or is this just comfy? Is this like hoarded
Speaker 1: fancy items or is this somebody who wanted to surround
Speaker 1: themselves with the things they like and sort of warm
Speaker 1: themselves in the glow of those things.
Speaker 2: So the critical idea here could be, yeah, like is
Speaker 2: there too much patterned wallpaper, too much patterned upholstery on
Speaker 2: the furniture, too many little doodads all over the place.
Speaker 2: It's just the room is too busy. You should live
Speaker 2: in a.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I guess one of the things that really
Speaker 1: comes out in thinking about in terms of art is,
Speaker 1: of course art criticism is generally highly subjective, and so
Speaker 1: also is the use of a term like horror of
Speaker 1: vacalie in terms of art and design or any kind
Speaker 1: of creative endeavor, and in film is not immune to this.
Speaker 1: I was really excited by this because I was looking
Speaker 1: around for I don't think I was even particularly looking
Speaker 1: for something about film, but I ran across discussion of
Speaker 1: horror vacalie and Jallo films. Yes, Fangoria Magazines, Alexandra Heller
Speaker 1: Nicholas has written film criticism discussing the subject of horror,
Speaker 1: vacualie and Jallo films. The book in question, which I
Speaker 1: haven't had time to read in full yet, but for
Speaker 1: whatever read so far, is quite good. It's the Jallo
Speaker 1: canvas art excess and horror cinema.
Speaker 2: SHALLO is absolutely a genre of SSS, and that is
Speaker 2: part of what makes it so enticing. Is it's just
Speaker 2: unrestrained expressiveness and gaudiness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's it's this of course, largely we're dealing
Speaker 1: with the Tagan cinema here, though, though its influence becomes
Speaker 1: such that it spills out into European cinema in general
Speaker 1: and also has a big influence on the global slasher genre.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's generally stylish to some degree, gratuitous, you know,
Speaker 1: it's flashy and so. Helen Nicholas here points out that naturally,
Speaker 1: how EVACUI doesn't just apply to high brow art. She
Speaker 1: cites the illustrations of Robert Crumb as an example, and
Speaker 1: then points to a couple of other horror cinema examples,
Speaker 1: possible examples such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, particulars the original
Speaker 1: Texas Chainsaw Massacre particularly. I believe she was pointing out
Speaker 1: these some of these early scenes where we're not even
Speaker 1: getting into the blood and the excess, but just like
Speaker 1: scenes where the inside of the Chainsaw Massacre household is
Speaker 1: just cluttered with all sorts of of you know, uncanny
Speaker 1: items like skulls and bird bones and knick knacks. And
Speaker 1: she also points to some other examples where there's like
Speaker 1: just where it's a similar situation where a lot of
Speaker 1: disturbing stuff sort of thrown at you so fast, and
Speaker 1: you don't general rule in horror, you know, don't show
Speaker 1: the monster too long, don't show the gore effect too long,
Speaker 1: and it can kind of overpower you like, overpowers the
Speaker 1: circuits with unease or revulsion. But to read a quick
Speaker 1: quote here quote in Jallo cinema, while certainly not lacking
Speaker 1: in moments of excessive blood and guts, excessive nudity, etc.
Speaker 1: It is also just as much frequently marked by an
Speaker 1: excess of style through color, music, mes on sin, and
Speaker 1: even performance styles. These films too, are marked by a
Speaker 1: sense of too much, an excess. We can loosely align
Speaker 1: with this tradition of horror Vakali.
Speaker 2: That is an excellent description of Jallo and what makes
Speaker 2: it so special that the core stylistic feature of it
Speaker 2: is too muchness. It's just a lot in every possible way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't know about you, but even just
Speaker 1: thinking about this made me think of various stills from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven Suspiria by Adario Argento, where there's just
Speaker 1: there's a lot of too muchness in the film, even
Speaker 1: the shots that are not bloody shots. There are several
Speaker 1: really bloody shots that are just overpowering the senses. But
Speaker 1: also other scenes that have like a Mario Bava hyper
Speaker 1: color realm sensibility to it, or just like a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of lines and shapes thrown at you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of interior designs wall I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's wallpaper, but painted walls with busy designs, you know,
Speaker 2: just fixtures and artworks and just stuff everywhere. It is
Speaker 2: not a minimalist looking film. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, speaking of film, I also and looking at all this,
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but think of movie posters as well,
Speaker 1: sort of the difference between it in an exciting, packed,
Speaker 1: maximalist a movie poster versus the minimalist movie poster, which
Speaker 1: was certainly a design trend not too long ago, maybe
Speaker 1: in the last ten years. And I guess there's still
Speaker 1: a lot of it going on, maybe not at the
Speaker 1: professional level, but sort of as a design exercise and
Speaker 1: an art exercise among other folks. Yeah, Like you know,
Speaker 1: I think of posters by American artist Drew Strusen, who
Speaker 1: did poster art for Blade Runner, various Star Wars films,
Speaker 1: also the nineteen seventy seven killer worm movie Squirm. These
Speaker 1: are all three poster examples, and you can look these
Speaker 1: up where there's just a lot packed into the image there.
Speaker 1: They're beautiful and they seem to overflow with the energy
Speaker 1: of those films, be it the drama, the sort of
Speaker 1: neon intrigue of something like like Blade Runner, or just
Speaker 1: the monstrous squirminess of Squirm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's a lot of actors' heads, so they're
Speaker 2: trying to pack actual marketing information into the painting. You're
Speaker 2: gonna see here are all the actors that you know
Speaker 2: and love that are going to get you into the theater.
Speaker 2: But also they're trying to give you some information about
Speaker 2: the plot, so you will see like moments or scenes
Speaker 2: from the movie in the poster. But then also, yeah,
Speaker 2: like you say, they're trying to suggest the I don't know,
Speaker 2: the kind of like throbbing energy of the movie. Like
Speaker 2: the horror ones are going to have a kind of
Speaker 2: a squirminess to them, you know, kind of like a
Speaker 2: kind of queasy light coming off of them, whereas the
Speaker 2: sci fi action movies have this glow as if from
Speaker 2: stars in the background or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and with something like squirm, they're not really any
Speaker 1: big name actors in that you're not trying to market
Speaker 1: it that way, so you pull back on the identifiable
Speaker 1: faces and heads and you just focus on the squirminess
Speaker 1: of the picture.
Speaker 2: Now, I really did enjoy a lot of those recent
Speaker 2: redesigns of classic movie posters, but in minimalist form. Though,
Speaker 2: I think that works a lot better for movies that
Speaker 2: people already know and love than it does for movies
Speaker 2: that nobody's ever seen before. Like when you're advertising a
Speaker 2: movie and you're trying to like catch people's eye and
Speaker 2: make them see it, that seems like when you really
Speaker 2: do actually want to try to cram a bunch of
Speaker 2: stuff into the poster to like cast a lot of
Speaker 2: lines essentially like oh do you like this actor? Their
Speaker 2: face is on there somewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like I was looking around for minimal examples of
Speaker 1: all three of these films that I just mentioned. I
Speaker 1: found that, you know, there are a lot of them
Speaker 1: that have been created for Blade Runner in the Star
Speaker 1: Wars films. But I found an episode three poster for
Speaker 1: Star Wars and they did the smart thing of basically
Speaker 1: invoking the shape of Darth Vader's head like that. That's
Speaker 1: an easy one. You can go super minimal on that
Speaker 1: because it's a very identifiable character outline.
Speaker 2: Yes, totally. I really like this one for Blade Runner
Speaker 2: that is just a yellow background with a black sort
Speaker 2: of minimalist geometric rendering of the Origami unicorn.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's more of I think, maybe on the cute
Speaker 1: level where it's like, oh, okay, I see what they
Speaker 1: were going for. Oh yeah, that's right, that's from the movie.
Speaker 1: A little detail and kind of a wink to folks
Speaker 1: who remember it. But I also found surprisingly, and I
Speaker 1: got this off of the Telltale mind dot com, they
Speaker 1: have a blog post there where it's squirm nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: Sorry I may have gotten the year wrong, and squirm there,
Speaker 1: but squirm nineteen seventy six. The visuals where they have
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of promotional visuals from the film, and
Speaker 1: a lot of it's very squirmy. There was one one
Speaker 1: particular international poster, one sheet or lobby card here this
Speaker 1: just absolutely loaded with worm images. But then there is
Speaker 1: strangely a single one that that has just the words
Speaker 1: squirm with kind of an interesting font. I guess that
Speaker 1: looks like maybe it was written by a worm that
Speaker 1: had been dipped in ink and it just says squirm the.
Speaker 2: Monstros seventy six incursive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in worm cursive, I guess, like I say, I
Speaker 1: think a worm maybe is supposed to have made that ass.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. All of this is subjective again,
Speaker 1: but it does make you think about, you know, what
Speaker 1: the difference is between cranking it up and pulling back
Speaker 1: on it, and certainly when it comes to the use
Speaker 1: of empty spaces or perceived empty spaces and visual design. Now,
Speaker 1: I also think it's very interesting to think about this
Speaker 1: concept in so called visionary art and psychedelic art and
Speaker 1: also psychedelic cinema, because you think of either of these
Speaker 1: categories and you often think of busyness. While the psychedelic
Speaker 1: experience itself, of course, is going to vary greatly. There
Speaker 1: is often a description of images and ideas filling the
Speaker 1: blank or the empty. Things that don't have meaning take
Speaker 1: on heightened meaning. Surfaces crawl, move and breathe, And from
Speaker 1: an AI perspective, I suppose the now sort of out
Speaker 1: of fashion a r I don't hear as much about it.
Speaker 1: A Google deep dream kind of created a version of
Speaker 1: this with with its tendency to find dog faces and everything.
Speaker 1: So any given image, any even like a blank background,
Speaker 1: would suddenly become faintly alive with intertwined cute dog faces.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you take a picture of a lawnmower and
Speaker 2: the you know, the starter button is a pug's face,
Speaker 2: and the and the and the wheels all become a
Speaker 2: little golden retriever as it's cute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it makes me think too about just the
Speaker 1: human tendency to define patterns and to fill emptiness with
Speaker 1: meaning and things. Even in the case of deprivation, you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of sense deprivation scenario or some sort of
Speaker 1: isolation scenario. The mind eventually starts finding details where they
Speaker 1: are not details, you know, sometimes to harmful degrees. And
Speaker 1: there are a lot of treatments of this too in
Speaker 1: various papers I was running across. You know, you get
Speaker 1: into whole discussions of, say, marketing, how do you fill
Speaker 1: your show window at a fancy fashion store, a clothing store.
Speaker 1: Do you just fill it up with the various items
Speaker 1: you're selling? And you certainly see this approach in some
Speaker 1: shop store windows. Or do you have like that one
Speaker 1: piece and in lots of blank space, open space, or
Speaker 1: maybe you know a few splashes of color. You know,
Speaker 1: there are arguments to be made for both sides. There
Speaker 1: are also very specific arguments about what kind of clientele
Speaker 1: are being attracted to this store window versus another.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and that's interesting because it brings us to
Speaker 2: I would say that there is a fairly consistent threat
Speaker 2: of class association with maximalist versus minimalist design, which is
Speaker 2: that minimalist designs are more often associated with wealth.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think one classic example of that is, of course,
Speaker 1: the upscale dinner plate versus the I don't know, the
Speaker 1: comfort food dinner plate, the comfort food dinner plate, say,
Speaker 1: filled from an all you can eat buffet generally is
Speaker 1: a pretty pretty loaded dish. There's not a lot of
Speaker 1: white space remaining on that dish. Meanwhile, what do you
Speaker 1: think of when you think of true upscale dining? What
Speaker 1: do you think of when you think of, say, the
Speaker 1: recent film The Menu, which is you know, very much
Speaker 1: a send up in parody of the high dining experience
Speaker 1: in the business and culture surrounding it. You think of
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of empty plate, and like maybe like
Speaker 1: a few piles or puddings or some sort of very
Speaker 1: interesting plating of the dish that doesn't take up too
Speaker 1: much much real estate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you will see a lot of plate.
Speaker 1: This also made me think about something that anybody out
Speaker 1: there has, any dealings with newspaper pagination or i guess
Speaker 1: design in general, any kind of like design and layout,
Speaker 1: and that is the subject of not only white space,
Speaker 1: but trapped white space. For those of you unaware that
Speaker 1: the general rule has long been when it comes to
Speaker 1: a newspaper page, there doesn't have to be an endless
Speaker 1: cascade of text and images taking up every space on
Speaker 1: the page. You can have some white space in there,
Speaker 1: you know, give your features and your images and your
Speaker 1: text a little room to breathe. But while you can
Speaker 1: have white space, you do not want to have trapped
Speaker 1: white space. So you can think of it this way,
Speaker 1: like your text and your images, this is all of
Speaker 1: one continent or island, and it's okay to have inlets
Speaker 1: and harbors that have white in them that accessible to
Speaker 1: the outer void, But you don't want lakes and pools
Speaker 1: of trapped white space within the piece. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's tempting from either side, if you're inside
Speaker 1: the world of pagination and design or outside of it,
Speaker 1: to on some level wonder, well, this is really makes sense,
Speaker 1: or this's just a standard, This is just this is
Speaker 1: just what they have told us to do. This is
Speaker 1: just the style. But I think there is a pretty
Speaker 1: strong argument to be made that the thing is spaces
Speaker 1: draw our attention. Spaces can be used effectively if they're
Speaker 1: used on purpose. They can be used to sort of
Speaker 1: heighten the message of other things in the visual design.
Speaker 1: But if you include them sort of slap dash, if
Speaker 1: you include them by accident, then all you're doing is
Speaker 1: drawing the eyes away from important content or content that
Speaker 1: you want to be seen is important towards just absolute
Speaker 1: nothing that has no you know, you're not heightening anything.
Speaker 1: You're just drawing eyes away from what they should be
Speaker 1: looking at.
Speaker 2: By point of comparison, I would say that rests moments
Speaker 2: of silence are used on purpose in music to heighten
Speaker 2: the effect of what is there. You know, rests are
Speaker 2: one of the most important things in making music good.
Speaker 2: But you would not want blank space inserted haphazardly without
Speaker 2: that kind of intention. In the middle of a song
Speaker 2: might be okay, between songs on a record, you wouldn't
Speaker 2: want it just going in between verses there. Oh, let's
Speaker 2: just have a break for a few seconds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unless it's like the break if you're listening to
Speaker 1: some drum and bass or something and you need you know,
Speaker 1: everything reaches a point and then it stops. Then you
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen next. A massive change and
Speaker 1: like high energy is going to occur. But that's meaningful
Speaker 1: white space, like your attention. Yeah, that's a rest, so
Speaker 1: I yeah, I totally understand. I think the same is
Speaker 1: true for the design layout of a page in a
Speaker 1: magazine or a newspaper. If you just have meaningless space
Speaker 1: in between the contents that that kind of throws you off.
Speaker 1: You're like, wait, why is that there? I imagine maybe
Speaker 1: we can hear from from folks south in the restaurant world.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are rules about this concerning the plating
Speaker 1: of food too, because I bet you don't want to
Speaker 1: have trapped white space on the plate in some form
Speaker 1: or another, Like you don't want it to look like
Speaker 1: something goes, something has been emitted from the plate, you know,
Speaker 1: like well, where did the pork chop go? Like that's
Speaker 1: the space, clearly where a pork chop could go. That's
Speaker 1: the only interpretation my mind can make of it.
Speaker 2: That's funny. I'm sure some pretentious chef has tried that
Speaker 2: we just doughnut shaped platings of food.
Speaker 1: So that's all. I mean. I feel like everything I
Speaker 1: just said maybe kind of a ramble and covered a
Speaker 1: go lot of ground. But I guess the the basic
Speaker 1: take home from all of this is the vacuum, the
Speaker 1: void and emptiness white space whatever however you're describing it
Speaker 1: or or encountering it in especially in a visual sense,
Speaker 1: like it has it has meaning one way or another,
Speaker 1: Like it's not a completely neutral thing one could even,
Speaker 1: I guess, get into the world of literature, right and
Speaker 1: printed books. You know, what is the feeling of the
Speaker 1: blank space at the end of a chapter, Between chapters
Speaker 1: or it's often been discussed, writers will discuss like the
Speaker 1: horror of the blank page when they can't think of
Speaker 1: something to write, and so forth, like the horror of
Speaker 1: that kind of void.
Speaker 2: You know, I have a whole tangent that I want
Speaker 2: to get into about horror vakue in cartography in map making,
Speaker 2: which is very much related to fear of the void
Speaker 2: in art, but raises some fresh issues of its own.
Speaker 2: But looking at the time, I think we've got a
Speaker 2: cap today's episode here, and so we will get into
Speaker 2: that in the next episode in the series.
Speaker 1: All right, so yes, join us for more discussions of
Speaker 1: the void on the next episode of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. A reminder that Tuesdays and Thursdays are the
Speaker 1: days when we publish our core episodes of the show.
Speaker 1: On Mondays we do listener mail, on Wednesdays we do
Speaker 1: a short form artifact or monster fact, and on Fridays
Speaker 1: we do weird house Cinema. That's our time to set
Speaker 1: aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 2: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com.
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