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