Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. We have one more Vault episode to
Speaker 1: air for you here to get us through the holidays,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to have some new episodes for
Speaker 1: you after that. This is our second episode on Horror
Speaker 1: of Vacuue. I So, without further ado, let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: 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 3: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 3: two of our series on horror vakue, or the fear
Speaker 3: of the void, the fear of emptiness, also sometimes paraphrased
Speaker 3: as the statement that nature abhors a vacuum. This is
Speaker 3: a topic that has many different faces we're going to
Speaker 3: touch on in this series. It of course has manifestations
Speaker 3: in the world of physics and the physical sciences and
Speaker 3: figures into the history of how we conceptualize space and
Speaker 3: the vacuum, but it also has manifestations in the world
Speaker 3: of psychology and in the world of art. In the
Speaker 3: last episode we focus mainly on art, and we're going
Speaker 3: to pick up with talking about art today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Joe, I don't know if this was the
Speaker 1: case with you, but I also found this to be
Speaker 1: This is a really fun topic to research, but also
Speaker 1: at times a slightly challenging one, doing part to just
Speaker 1: how frequently the term horror vocali is invoked in papers,
Speaker 1: sometimes at the drop of a hat.
Speaker 3: Yes, this happens with us. Sometimes with like, you are
Speaker 3: searching for writings about a concept, but instead what you
Speaker 3: will find is a lot of writings that use that
Speaker 3: concept as a metaphor for what they want to talk about.
Speaker 1: Right, right, So it seems to be the case that
Speaker 1: if you want to find something that has just via
Speaker 1: the vocation of the term at least a tangential connection
Speaker 1: to horror vacoe, then you can find it. For instance,
Speaker 1: if you want a paper then invokes horror vacoe and
Speaker 1: Spanish horror icon Paul Nashy, Well you can do it.
Speaker 1: I found three of them with just to kill a
Speaker 1: quick search. Yeah, and you know these are vapor where
Speaker 1: it's not it's not the core thing they're going after,
Speaker 1: but at some point or another they're going to use
Speaker 1: this term to describe a particular artist or that artist's work,
Speaker 1: or perhaps even you know, counterexamples to what a particular
Speaker 1: artist was doing. So it seems kind of unavoidable, especially
Speaker 1: given just how you know, how common this aspect seems
Speaker 1: to be to human perception and creation, the idea that
Speaker 1: you know you have minimalism, you have maximalism, and you
Speaker 1: know the various spaces between.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is all true, And I at least encountered
Speaker 3: another difficulty with reading about horror vacae, which is that
Speaker 3: I've noticed the term is used very differently, sometimes with
Speaker 3: the sort of pejorative connotation and sometimes without. And for
Speaker 3: an example of this, I was watching a lecture about
Speaker 3: horror vakue in the history of map making by the
Speaker 3: historian of cartography chet Van Duser, former guests on the show,
Speaker 3: by the way, and I'll talk about his writings on
Speaker 3: this subject later in this episode. But this lecture invoked
Speaker 3: a definition of horror vakue by a scholar named Braxton Soderman.
Speaker 3: And in this case, Soderman, I think would not use
Speaker 3: the term horror vakue to apply to in general works
Speaker 3: that are busy or highly decorated. I mean, there are
Speaker 3: tons of things that would be very busy, highly decorated
Speaker 3: you know, densely detailed works of art that would not
Speaker 3: get this term. Instead, he would use it specifically to
Speaker 3: refer to the motivation driving cases where you would judge
Speaker 3: busy art or busy designed to not be a thoughtful
Speaker 3: and effective design choice. So the quote goes, horror vacui
Speaker 3: is the fear of empty space that results in the
Speaker 3: overmarking of visual space, excessive decoration that threatens to overwhelm
Speaker 3: what is being decorated, the stuffing of gaps and sezura
Speaker 3: with further representation. So it's not just anything that's busy
Speaker 3: or crowded, but it's things that are busy or crowded
Speaker 3: in a kind of compulsive, uncontrolled way.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, So what Suderman is saying here then would
Speaker 1: be that something like I don't know the works of
Speaker 1: Irving Norman or one of these other artists we discussed
Speaker 1: in Part one, who are trying to make some comment
Speaker 1: or create art that in some way invokes a sense
Speaker 1: of chaos or disorder. It wouldn't necessarily apply to what
Speaker 1: they're doing, because it is like a definite choice, but
Speaker 1: it might apply to the outsider art or folk card
Speaker 1: of say Howard Finster.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think he would necessarily apply the term
Speaker 3: to them. I mean, I don't know what he personally
Speaker 3: would apply it to. I think he's just saying that
Speaker 3: whoever is using this term, however you're using it, it
Speaker 3: would be applying to things that you think are excessive
Speaker 3: or overmarked, whatever that means to you.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, Yeah, So he's making a distinction then, between
Speaker 1: and of course, bowing to individual interpretation, that one view
Speaker 1: of an artist might be that they are thoughtfully invoking,
Speaker 1: say a sense of chaos or disorder by filling you know,
Speaker 1: all the margins with the images of such disorder, while
Speaker 1: on the other hand, there might be another artist out
Speaker 1: there where it is more of a compulsion. It is
Speaker 1: more of a situation where they have perhaps a lot
Speaker 1: to say, too much to say, and are trying to
Speaker 1: like fit it all in.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Possibly, Or of course, it wouldn't just have to
Speaker 3: be representing, you know, chaos or disorder. Could also be
Speaker 3: representing richness or anything, you know. Whatever the reason is
Speaker 3: for the infilling of detail, it would be something that
Speaker 3: is done on purpose or done for a reason, rather
Speaker 3: than something that is done compulsively, maybe driven by a
Speaker 3: kind of anxiety about leaving blank or uniform space, and
Speaker 3: that latter sense, the one driven by horror vacui, is
Speaker 3: in this definition, one that detracts from the effect of
Speaker 3: the piece, one that quote threatens to overwhelm what is
Speaker 3: being decorated. So again, I think this author would probably
Speaker 3: not use the term to refer to things that are
Speaker 3: busy or crowded as a result of a well considered
Speaker 3: deliberate choice by the artist or designer. It would refer
Speaker 3: to things where the infilling seems haphazard or unwarranted or ineffective.
Speaker 3: So while I am usually quite partial to busy, detail
Speaker 3: rich artwork, there are examples I can think of where
Speaker 3: I can look at an artwork or design choice and say, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think this just looks like compulsive behavior that seems
Speaker 3: driven by a kind of discomfort with blank space. And
Speaker 3: one example I would agree with characterizing this way is
Speaker 3: cited in the same lecture by chet van Duser I
Speaker 3: mentioned a minute ago. It's the practice of line filling
Speaker 3: in medieval manuscripts, and so maybe this will help illustrate.
Speaker 3: So this is this page I want to show you.
Speaker 3: Rob is from a manuscript known as Walters one thirteen
Speaker 3: which is a late thirteenth century Latin Psalter Assalter, meaning
Speaker 3: a book that contains the biblical Book of Psalms, and
Speaker 3: it's from the region of France that was then Flanders.
Speaker 3: Now you know, I love my medieval manuscripts with zany margins.
Speaker 3: I want donkeys playing trumpets. I want armored war rabbits
Speaker 3: locked in battle, with naked men writing centipede dogs. I
Speaker 3: want it all. But even with that predisposition, I think
Speaker 3: I would be critical of what we see in some
Speaker 3: of the pages of Walters one thirteen, such as the
Speaker 3: one sided by van Duzer. And this is where there
Speaker 3: are illustrations intruding into the very lines of the tech itself.
Speaker 3: So the issue is that when a line of text
Speaker 3: does not stretch all the way to the margin, when
Speaker 3: it does not fill out the column, the artists here
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was the copyist or the
Speaker 3: rubricator or somebody else, literally fills in the rest of
Speaker 3: the line with a rectangular illustration of some kind. So
Speaker 3: it might be a mousehead, or just some vines with
Speaker 3: red and gold leaves, or a big old p hen.
Speaker 3: I like these types of illustrations, but this does seem
Speaker 3: kind of excessive to me, like it would actually make
Speaker 3: the text harder to read and detract from its effect,
Speaker 3: and it just kind of makes the page feel cluttered
Speaker 3: and like there's no space to breathe. Kind of going
Speaker 3: back to our episodes on the history of the paragraph
Speaker 3: and the importance of blank space in prose text.
Speaker 1: I would agree with the caveat to our eyes reading
Speaker 1: across the sentries.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I'm talking about my opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but yes, as a modern viewer looking of this,
Speaker 1: the pea hens and the strange dog creatures are a
Speaker 1: bit distracting, not that I can read the actual text anyway.
Speaker 3: Now right, Well, well, to connect again with the paragraphs episode,
Speaker 3: I mean here we see very little spacing between parts
Speaker 3: of the text itself, Like the text is also very
Speaker 3: crammed and crowded in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so, I mean maybe to the original creators
Speaker 1: of this page and the original intended readers of this page,
Speaker 1: like this is opening things up. They're like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: giving you some space. That's what the dog is, That's
Speaker 1: what the bird with the human head and the dunce
Speaker 1: cap is about. That is a good bird. It reminds
Speaker 1: me a bit. And this is coming back to like,
Speaker 1: you know, cinematic examples and parody of cinematic examples. But
Speaker 1: there's an episode of Futurama where Zoid birds Uncle Harold Zoid,
Speaker 1: an old time me cinema director who made like silent
Speaker 1: holographic pictures. He's directing a new film and he's at
Speaker 1: one point he says, people, people, please, just because this
Speaker 1: dramatic scene doesn't mean you can't do a little comedy
Speaker 1: in the background. And it's you know, it's referring to
Speaker 1: I guess the you know, to modern viewers, they often
Speaker 1: busy nature and the sort of frantic nature of say,
Speaker 1: old silent films.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah. So anyway, on this, like Walter's one thirteen,
Speaker 3: a person might feel that this counts as horror vacui
Speaker 3: in the critical sense, in the sense of overmarking or
Speaker 3: excessive decoration that sort of threatens to overwhelm that which
Speaker 3: is being decorated. But to come back to my point
Speaker 3: about usage, it seems that while some authors use the
Speaker 3: term exclusively in this sense, like a in some sense
Speaker 3: a critical statement or a critical statement about the motivation
Speaker 3: driving certain design choices, it's also sometimes used more generic,
Speaker 3: without a spirit of criticism that I can detect and
Speaker 3: would just be descriptive, like it would refer to any
Speaker 3: ardor design without a lot of blank space, even if
Speaker 3: the author making the statement believes that such a design
Speaker 3: is effective or thoughtful, or well considered or beautiful. So
Speaker 3: I guess this can create confusion when the term is
Speaker 3: invoked about whether it's being used with a critical connotation
Speaker 3: or not. Is it just, say, does horror vacae just
Speaker 3: describe an artwork that is busy and filled in with
Speaker 3: detail to all the edges, or is it a class
Speaker 3: of motivation to create certain artworks of this type, specifically
Speaker 3: artworks that are not as good as others?
Speaker 1: Now, you know, discussing though, the way that sometimes the
Speaker 1: term is used to depict, you know, primitive impulse or
Speaker 1: to describe a quality of more ancient forms of art
Speaker 1: versus modern forms. I do think it's helpful to look
Speaker 1: at other examples from other parts of the world in
Speaker 1: other times times. And I was trying to think of, like, well,
Speaker 1: what's a good one that's you know, a little bit
Speaker 1: different from from what we've we've looked at in the
Speaker 1: first episode, And I kept coming back to Tibetan art,
Speaker 1: particularly in Tibetan Buddhist art that I imagine when I even
Speaker 1: mention this, like certain images are coming to mind, and
Speaker 1: these images that come to mind maybe indeed be like
Speaker 1: very full, very complex pieces that indeed take up an
Speaker 1: entire given space.
Speaker 3: So if we're applying the term here, it would be
Speaker 3: in the descriptive sense, not in the critical sense, because
Speaker 3: I think you and I agree these art works are amazing.
Speaker 1: Right, and I, to be honest, I didn't find any
Speaker 1: sources out there that we're really invoking this term to
Speaker 1: describe Tibetan art, So I'm not I'm not attempting to
Speaker 1: jump to the defense of it or anything, because the
Speaker 1: attack would be I think, entirely imaginary here. But it's interesting,
Speaker 1: I think to look at work that you might see
Speaker 1: as as you know, very full or even very busy,
Speaker 1: and sort of described like why is it like that?
Speaker 1: And what does it have to do with the original
Speaker 1: purpose and context of a given work. So a little background.
Speaker 1: A Tibetan style of art began to develop on the
Speaker 1: Tibetan Plateau during the tenth century, this following a formative
Speaker 1: era during which Buddhism took on a form in Tibet
Speaker 1: most in tune with the religious needs of the people,
Speaker 1: their pre existing shamanistic traditions, and much more. And this
Speaker 1: is discussed in great detail and an excellent book that
Speaker 1: I have on the shelf here by Robert E. Fischer
Speaker 1: titled Art of Tibet. Now, I'm not going to get
Speaker 1: super into the different forms of Tibetan Buddhism or even
Speaker 1: the full variety of images, but suffice to say that
Speaker 1: while not all examples of Tibetan Buddhist art invoke a
Speaker 1: feeling of maximalism, some of the most famous examples of sculpture,
Speaker 1: and especially monastery wall paintings, do tend to kind of
Speaker 1: overpower you with a sense of cosmic abundance.
Speaker 3: Yes, and many of them seem to me like they
Speaker 3: are not only overflowing with detail, but over flowing with
Speaker 3: sort of different levels of focus, Like there's a lot
Speaker 3: of different layers of detail that you know, things that
Speaker 3: are kind of like zoomed out versus zoomed in, if
Speaker 3: that makes any sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, you do feel like there's a sense of
Speaker 1: zooming in and zooming out. MANI pieces will have like
Speaker 1: a kind of central focus and it can almost feel
Speaker 1: like some sort of of a map. It can almost
Speaker 1: feel like some sort of and this is where we
Speaker 1: get into some of the actual purpose here, some sort
Speaker 1: of educational document that indeed there is information that is
Speaker 1: being relayed here. And yeah, this is one of two
Speaker 1: important factors to keep in mind regarding why these images
Speaker 1: are so again cosmically abundant. First of all, as Fisher
Speaker 1: points out, esoteric Buddhism, like Vadriyana Buddhism was Indy, is
Speaker 1: a complex system. One comparison that I've seen elsewhere is
Speaker 1: that you might think of these forms of Buddhism as
Speaker 1: a kind of Buddhist super science, a kind of advancediritual technology.
Speaker 1: Fisher points out that it essentially a means of accelerating
Speaker 1: the path toward enlightenment, condensing the work of eons into
Speaker 1: a single mortal lifespan. And at the same time, there
Speaker 1: was still like a sense of urgency to the practice,
Speaker 1: Fisher stresses, because ultimately you're dealing with the trajectory of
Speaker 1: the human soul. So there was a great deal to
Speaker 1: be taught, a great deal to guide one through, a
Speaker 1: great deal as a learner to absorb. And it was
Speaker 1: more than a written text or even a robust monastic
Speaker 1: tradition could do on its own. Fisher writes the following quote,
Speaker 1: The need to harness the myriad powers and to organize
Speaker 1: the parts of this vast system into a manageable whole
Speaker 1: required a large and complex visual system of support and
Speaker 1: gave rise to the ritual instruments and images that have
Speaker 1: given the Vadriana its distinctive flavor, as well as the
Speaker 1: huge array of deities representing the tremendous range of powers
Speaker 1: and practices.
Speaker 3: Okay, so in some sense, the detail rich nature of
Speaker 3: a lot of this artwork could be related to the
Speaker 3: sort of the vastness and complexity of the belief system
Speaker 3: underlying it exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, we're dealing with various images and objects here
Speaker 1: that are not necessarily merely decoration but also ritualistic and instructional.
Speaker 1: So the image may be full or abundant or even
Speaker 1: you know, considered busy because there is a great deal
Speaker 1: of information to relate and support via the image, and
Speaker 1: I guess you know you can you can look at
Speaker 1: various examples and other systems, Like anytime there's a lot
Speaker 1: of information to put in an image via a map
Speaker 1: or you know, to sort of bring it into this
Speaker 1: realm of the unreal. I'm reminded of the maps, the
Speaker 1: many wonderful maps that have been created over the years
Speaker 1: for Dante's Inferno and the other books in the Divine Comedy,
Speaker 1: where there is a fantastic physical realm that has to
Speaker 1: be created there, but it's also just loaded with information
Speaker 1: and loaded with all sorts of stuff, and it can
Speaker 1: be very helpful when you're, say, reading The Inferno, but
Speaker 1: also if you try and fit everything into the map,
Speaker 1: it could conceivably be overwhelmed. Now Elsewhere in the book,
Speaker 1: Fisher makes a great point too about the role place
Speaker 1: has in all of this as well. So we're dealing
Speaker 1: with centuries of tradition here. And while I don't want
Speaker 1: to devalue the vast size of the Tibetan Plateau because
Speaker 1: it is enormous, or the biodiversity of the region because
Speaker 1: it contains numerous ecosystems, but individual works and monasteries are
Speaker 1: going to be generally tied to particular locations within it.
Speaker 1: As Fisher points out, the interior of a Tibetan monastery
Speaker 1: is elaborate, with full wall painting that quote transform those
Speaker 1: rooms into spiritual environments which surround and even overwhelm the
Speaker 1: worshiper with large, expressive displays of the many Buddhist worlds,
Speaker 1: and he stresses that this is all in stark contrast
Speaker 1: to the world outside the monastery, typically defined by the
Speaker 1: quote often barren, wind swept Tibetan landscape.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. So he's saying that in many of these places,
Speaker 3: if you were to go outside the monastery, you'd be
Speaker 3: greeted with an image of the world that is quite beautiful,
Speaker 3: but maybe not busy with detail or busy with lots
Speaker 3: of little things populating it. It would be often a
Speaker 3: very I don't know what the word is, A kind
Speaker 3: of smooth topography. I mean, I guess not smooth, because
Speaker 3: it would be mountainous, but you know, not a lot
Speaker 3: of forests and cities and so forth right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, I included an image here of the Debutton Plateau,
Speaker 1: and it's particularly gorgeous view. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that one could probably find individual vistas. Don't
Speaker 1: feel is open in the Tibetan plateau. But I feel
Speaker 1: like this kind of I feel like this has a
Speaker 1: certain logic to it, Like the idea that first of all,
Speaker 1: going back to the previous comment, like, on one hand,
Speaker 1: you have information encoded in the work, but also it
Speaker 1: has to do with this awe inspiring transition out of
Speaker 1: the mundane world and into the inner spiritual world of
Speaker 1: the monastery or of a temple. So I think, on
Speaker 1: one hand, it's important to realize that the contrast between
Speaker 1: the empty and the full might be lost in an
Speaker 1: analysis of a work, you know, if you're just viewing
Speaker 1: it in isolation on a page, on a screen, or
Speaker 1: even in a you know, a museum setting. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, this is more of a tangent, but I
Speaker 1: wonder how we might think of this in terms of
Speaker 1: ancient versus modern, or even in just pre modern in
Speaker 1: general versus modern creations, because if the world outside of
Speaker 1: a particular experience is, by one definition or another minimalist,
Speaker 1: then perhaps it makes more sense for the work itself,
Speaker 1: the inner work, to present a contrast of maximalism. Likewise,
Speaker 1: of the world outside the monastery is, by one definition
Speaker 1: or another maximalist or busy, then perhaps we crave the quiet,
Speaker 1: the simple, and the minimal within the experience of place
Speaker 1: or painting or film or musical composition.
Speaker 3: That's very interesting. I could see that. So if yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe you live in a busy city center, the sacred
Speaker 3: space you retreat to, you would want to have a
Speaker 3: lot of empty or uniform space in it to give
Speaker 3: you a sense of rest maybe, Whereas if you live
Speaker 3: in a more pastoral environment, you might want to retreat
Speaker 3: to a sacred space that is full of just a busy,
Speaker 3: rich detail and complexity.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And at the same time, though, I realized that
Speaker 1: it might still be entirely subjective, because I can easily imagine, say,
Speaker 1: you know, an individual living in the big city and
Speaker 1: they're going into a sacred space or museum space, and like,
Speaker 1: what is their relationship to the world on the outside?
Speaker 1: Is is it and an abundant or is it is
Speaker 1: there an emptiness to it? And therefore they want something
Speaker 1: more full on the inside, Like the sacred space should
Speaker 1: give them an energy that they feel is lacking in
Speaker 1: the world outside. Like, like I say, I guess it
Speaker 1: could go either way, depending on what an individual's view
Speaker 1: of the mundane world is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really interesting observation, though, I wonder about
Speaker 3: that now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like take the various male wolf locations for example,
Speaker 1: those are certainly kind of maximalist experiences you don't go in.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's it's not just an overabundance
Speaker 1: of images. There's you know, various artists, various styles and
Speaker 1: so forth. It's not just wall to wall. But generally
Speaker 1: I have found when I when I and the one
Speaker 1: that I visited, I left feeling like I had experienced
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 3: That's interesting because I when I went, I found it
Speaker 3: kind of RESTful as well. I think maybe it has
Speaker 3: to do with the dim lighting in there, or there
Speaker 3: are plenty of lights, but they're not bright white light
Speaker 3: and the kind of soothing sonic atmospheres. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So anyway, you know, I bring all this up
Speaker 1: more or less just to raise additional questions and bring
Speaker 1: up additional examples. But we'd obviously love to hear from
Speaker 1: folks out there who have thoughts on all of this
Speaker 1: related to their experiences in museums and sacred spaces, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Now I mentioned earlier that I was going to come
Speaker 3: back to chet VanDuzer, and this relates to fear of
Speaker 3: the void in art. I came across some work by
Speaker 3: previous show guests Chet van Duser on the role of
Speaker 3: horror vakue in map making. So if you didn't hear
Speaker 3: that episode from a few years back, chet VanDuzer is
Speaker 3: an American historian of cartography, and he came on the
Speaker 3: show several years back to talk about why and how
Speaker 3: cartographers of the past would so frequently add sea monsters
Speaker 3: to their maps. And one possible explanation for the proliferation
Speaker 3: of sirens and sly the marine serpent kings out in
Speaker 3: the deep water is horror vacuee on the part of
Speaker 3: the map maker. This would be the version that's not
Speaker 3: just merely descriptive of something that's filling in details, but
Speaker 3: a description of a motivation on the part of the
Speaker 3: artist or map maker, that there's an abhorrence for blankness
Speaker 3: that goes in the case of maps, beyond just the
Speaker 3: creation of monsters, but to all kinds of extraneous infilling
Speaker 3: of stuff in the watery corners of the page or
Speaker 3: in the deep middles of continence on the page. And
Speaker 3: so I was looking at a digital curation of examples
Speaker 3: on the Stanford Library's website. This is for the Barry
Speaker 3: Lawrence Rudermann Conference on Cartography, and there are some explanatory
Speaker 3: materials by Chet van Duser, So he writes that despite
Speaker 3: the fact that some previous scholars had cast doubt on
Speaker 3: whether horror vacuee was ever a major influence on map makers,
Speaker 3: he argues that whether you frame it as a positive
Speaker 3: desire for excess decoration or a negative aversion to blank space,
Speaker 3: it seems pretty clear that horror vaka wei of one
Speaker 3: kind or another was an important pressure in the design
Speaker 3: of European maps from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century,
Speaker 3: at least four some cartographers. Because this was not universal,
Speaker 3: he also shows many examples of maps that were perfectly
Speaker 3: content to leave vast areas blank, often the interiors of
Speaker 3: continental spaces unknown to the map maker, or vast ocean spaces.
Speaker 3: Now rob I thought the first example Venduser selects that
Speaker 3: we would look at here is the Taypus Aurorum Martimorum
Speaker 3: Ginne Alangren. And this is a map created by the
Speaker 3: Dutch cartographer Janhugen von Lynschoten, who lived fifteen sixty three
Speaker 3: to sixteen eleven. I believe this map is from fifteen
Speaker 3: ninety six and it depicts the South Atlantic and the
Speaker 3: western coast of Africa. Now the ocean takes up it
Speaker 3: looks like at least three quarters of the map. But
Speaker 3: the ocean here is absolutely overflowing with stuff, to the
Speaker 3: point that it's kind of funny to look at. There
Speaker 3: are inset drawings of the mountains on Saint Helena and
Speaker 3: Ascension Island. There is a compass or multiple compasses. There
Speaker 3: is a drawing of three ships being visited by a
Speaker 3: sea monster. I can't tell if the sea monster is
Speaker 3: attacking the ships or just saying hello, rob Maybe you
Speaker 3: can render a judgment on that illustration in a moment.
Speaker 3: But there is also lots of absurdly florid lettering on
Speaker 3: the names of places. Will you just look at this
Speaker 3: oceanus what? I can't even read the word it's so
Speaker 3: there's so much swirling on the letters. Get let the
Speaker 3: podcasts or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot going on here, and I mean
Speaker 1: it almost looks like you've gotten You've got pop ups
Speaker 1: occurring on the mask. Yes, that you need to close
Speaker 1: out so you can see the rest of the ocean here.
Speaker 3: That's very Yeah, yeah you want to click the x's. Uh,
Speaker 3: but let's get a good look at this sea monster. Now,
Speaker 3: it looks kind of like it's a giant green fish
Speaker 3: with red fins and the head of don't know, what
Speaker 3: would you call that, kind of like a pig calf head.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's very mammalian, but it's.
Speaker 3: Got the angry eyes. It's it's got attack eyes. And
Speaker 3: is it attacking the ships or is it just kind
Speaker 3: of flopping around for them to look at? Not quite clear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. It looks it looks. It looks
Speaker 1: a little sweet to me, like it's just kind of
Speaker 1: mine in its own business. But maybe no, no, wait,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at it depends how you Okay, it depends
Speaker 1: how you look at it. At first, when I looked
Speaker 1: at this particular monster, I thought its head was sort
Speaker 1: of to the side, And now I see it as
Speaker 1: it was intended. Yes, it does look angry and looks
Speaker 1: more like a pig, whereas the way I seeing it
Speaker 1: at first, it looked more like an otter.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I saw that. You were looking at
Speaker 3: the more zoomed out image, that does look more odder.
Speaker 1: Like mm hmm. Yeah, But when you see it a
Speaker 1: little closer, you can get Yeah, it has this kind
Speaker 1: of a still mammalion, but angry and perhaps threatening the ships.
Speaker 3: But okay, this first example, there is just so much
Speaker 3: illustration in the ocean here, and just a lot of
Speaker 3: inset text. The boxes boxes of text. I think they're
Speaker 3: called cartouch's, maybe just like elaborately decorated boxes with like
Speaker 3: those baroque museum frames illustrated around them that have you know,
Speaker 3: they say something in them. Now let's look at another map.
Speaker 3: This is one that of Venduzer Selects that is called
Speaker 3: a New Plane and Exact Map of America by Robert Walton,
Speaker 3: who lived sixteen eighteen to sixteen eighty eight. I think
Speaker 3: this map is from sixteen sixty And let me flag
Speaker 3: a little lull here at the word plane in its time,
Speaker 3: because again it's just it's so much stuff. The oceans
Speaker 3: are filled with ships, sea monsters, random blocks of text.
Speaker 3: The border of the map is stuffed with illustrations of
Speaker 3: landmarks and explorers, and what the map maker believed were
Speaker 3: the representations of clothing of various native peoples. There is
Speaker 3: even sort of a guess at the coast of Antarctica,
Speaker 3: though I want to say Antarctica was not discovered until
Speaker 3: the nineteenth century. This is just a random line of
Speaker 3: coast south of Cape Horn that has labeled unknown land,
Speaker 3: so it's just sort of a guess there's probably some
Speaker 3: land down here.
Speaker 1: Wow. This Yeah, this map is a lot to take in.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that it's particularly pleasing to the eye.
Speaker 1: It has the feeling of a publication, like in the
Speaker 1: sense that they said, well, we've got some extra space
Speaker 1: on here, let's get some more content on this map.
Speaker 3: You know what it looks. It kind of looks like
Speaker 3: did you ever have those highly informational place maps when
Speaker 3: you were a kid.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, You're going to eat.
Speaker 3: Your spaghetti on this new plane exact map of America.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this would work great as a place mat. Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 3: But Van Duser, writing of Walton's map, says, quote, it
Speaker 3: is tempting to think that the map's busy appearance attracted
Speaker 3: and held the eyes of his customers and thus helped
Speaker 3: increase sales. So that's an interesting consideration. It's possible that
Speaker 3: a desire to sell maps could have driven some horror
Speaker 3: vacuee in cartographers, because maybe a map seems more valuable
Speaker 3: if it is filled with lots of illustrations and text.
Speaker 3: Maybe it seems less valuable if the places where you
Speaker 3: you know, you don't really have any geographical information to add,
Speaker 3: are just blank.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can see. It's kind of like with the
Speaker 1: eliminated manuscripts we're discussing earlier. I mean, if you were
Speaker 1: paying for one of these or commissioning, when you might say, hey,
Speaker 1: I thought this thing was going to be illuminated. Where
Speaker 1: is the illumination they paid for? Yeah, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of content added here, and yet at the same time,
Speaker 1: the North part of America has a fair amount of
Speaker 1: white space, trapped white space in it here.
Speaker 3: Oh it does. Yeah, that's the interior continent. In fact,
Speaker 3: some of the other examples elsewhere that Venduzer sites to
Speaker 3: show cases where map makers were clearly not afraid to
Speaker 3: leave blank space. A lot of that blank space is
Speaker 3: like in the center of the Asian continent, so they'll
Speaker 3: represent you know, Europe and Africa and like the southern
Speaker 3: coast of the Asian mainland, and then like all up
Speaker 3: inside there, it's just a vast blankness. They just didn't
Speaker 3: know what was there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks like in this particular map they added
Speaker 1: some text under the North part of America, but they
Speaker 1: just didn't have even enough to fill. I have a
Speaker 1: few pictures of animals, but ultimately there's clearly a lot
Speaker 1: that's unknown at the time of this maps.
Speaker 3: Making all right, I want to look at one more
Speaker 3: of Vanduzer's examples. The next one is a map by
Speaker 3: Henri Abraham Chdalan called I'm not sure how to say
Speaker 3: this French, but I think it's like cart Trey curieuse
Speaker 3: de la Mayre de Sud. This is Amsterdam, seventeen nineteen.
Speaker 3: So this is more like an attempt to This is
Speaker 3: not quite a map of the entire world, but it
Speaker 3: is a map of a lot of the world. So
Speaker 3: it has North America, South America, half of Africa, half
Speaker 3: of Europe, and then the eastern part of the Asian continent.
Speaker 3: And then it's got a lot of ocean in it.
Speaker 3: So it's got the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and
Speaker 3: once again there's all kinds of stuff sort of crowding
Speaker 3: in from the edges. In fact, Rob, I would almost
Speaker 3: say this adheres to the exact inverse of your rule
Speaker 3: about blank space in like typesetting newspapers, where you know,
Speaker 3: white space was okay if it's sort of connected to
Speaker 3: the oceans at the outer edge of the page. You
Speaker 3: just don't want trapped white space here. All of the
Speaker 3: illustrations and boxes and cartouches seem to be just pouring
Speaker 3: in from the edges of the map, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's it's very interesting to look at. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure a lot of this has to do
Speaker 1: with the clearly visible trade routes that are marked, like
Speaker 1: you don't want to throw your copious amounts of illustrations
Speaker 1: on top of that that they work well to fill
Speaker 1: in these areas where ships are not navigating between the continents.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I really like Van User's observation about this
Speaker 3: map quote. The great profusion of inset maps and scenes
Speaker 3: along the northern and southern edges of Henri Chatealan seventeen
Speaker 3: nineteen very Curious Map of the Pacific show the cartographer's
Speaker 3: strong desire to avoid empty space, and more specifically, to
Speaker 3: conceal his ignorance of what lay in the extreme northern
Speaker 3: and southern reais of the world. The south is essentially
Speaker 3: tiled over with inset maps that include ethnographic scenes in
Speaker 3: the north. Note that he conceals his ignorance of northwestern
Speaker 3: North America with a series of portraits of explorers. That's
Speaker 3: a very clever trick, and honestly, I don't know if
Speaker 3: I would have noticed it if Fanduzer hadn't pointed it out.
Speaker 3: Sometimes an abundance of extraneous detail can be used to
Speaker 3: distract the audience from the absence of significant or useful detail.
Speaker 3: In other words, busyness can be used to hide emptiness.
Speaker 3: So on a map, this would mean that you might
Speaker 3: be less inclined to, you know, pipe up and say, hey,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, what islands can be found in this
Speaker 3: region of the Pacific Ocean, Or wait a minute, what
Speaker 3: is the shape of the northwest coast of North America.
Speaker 3: You might not notice to ask that question because the
Speaker 3: map doesn't just sort of like go blank in these places. Instead,
Speaker 3: it is plastered with like Magellan and Vespucci heads and
Speaker 3: what appear to be somewhat inaccurate drawings of Mesoamerican pyramids
Speaker 3: with human sacrifices happening all around them. So it's just
Speaker 3: adding in these illustrations in places where the author or
Speaker 3: the map maker doesn't exactly know what they should depict
Speaker 3: in an informational sense in the map itself.
Speaker 1: Yes, this close up that you included for me of
Speaker 1: the human sacrifice scene is quite ridiculous and monstrous. And
Speaker 1: I see an individual with a face on his stomach
Speaker 1: in the background as well.
Speaker 3: Is that what it is? Yeah, that's confusing. I don't
Speaker 3: know what that means.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean when he shows up, you know your
Speaker 1: illustration is well off the mark when it comes to
Speaker 1: realistic depiction of cultural practices.
Speaker 3: Is this going to help me navigate the Pacific? I'm
Speaker 3: not sure, but this will come back in a minute.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's not the point of a map like this, though,
Speaker 3: I think it's important to dwell in this for a second.
Speaker 3: Because of course, this technique of hiding the lack of
Speaker 3: significant or relevant detail by filling the void with irrelevant
Speaker 3: or extraneous detail is not just used in maps. This
Speaker 3: is actually something I notice in verbal rhetoric all the time.
Speaker 3: It is like a common trick of persuasion and argumentation.
Speaker 3: For example, you can see it in courtrooms if you
Speaker 3: don't have very good evidence to cite in support of
Speaker 3: your case. Instead, you just say a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: You just try to rapidly lay out a bunch of
Speaker 3: facts or claims that sound vaguely on topic. And if
Speaker 3: you say enough stuff fast enough, it could be hard
Speaker 3: for the jury or the audience to stop and analyze
Speaker 3: each thing you said and think, wait a minute, does
Speaker 3: this actually prove what you're trying to prove is does
Speaker 3: this lead to your conclusion? Instead, like you use a
Speaker 3: blizzard of statements to create the impression that you have
Speaker 3: made argument, you hide the core of vacuity of your
Speaker 3: case behind a hieronymous bosh painting of talk.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's kind of like with the map versus the painting.
Speaker 1: It's more detectable when there's like a definite purpose or
Speaker 1: intended purpose to the answer. Yeah, because it's like one
Speaker 1: thing to come up to someone and say, hey, what
Speaker 1: is art? And then you might get a really rambling response,
Speaker 1: but you kind of should right, Yeah. But if it's
Speaker 1: more like, hey, if you can come to your boss
Speaker 1: and be like, what are my duties for the coming
Speaker 1: month or how is my performance over the last quarter,
Speaker 1: if there are a lot of add ons and pop
Speaker 1: ups in that particular answer, then yeah, it feels like
Speaker 1: you didn't really get a clear answer to the question. Yes.
Speaker 3: Yes, In that case, the boss would be papering over
Speaker 3: an actual problem in the workplace, with a bunch of
Speaker 3: extraneous detail, essentially painting like Magellan heads and Christopher Columbus
Speaker 3: heads over the part of the map where you should
Speaker 3: be getting detail about what you're supposed to do. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But anyway to come back to maps specifically, Van Duser
Speaker 3: argues that eventually the cartography of Horror Vacui fell out
Speaker 3: of fashion. By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.
Speaker 3: You start to see a decline in this impulse to
Speaker 3: fill every corner of the map with stuff, and that
Speaker 3: seems to coincide with a decline in decoration generally, and
Speaker 3: an increasing trend of seeing maps purely as utilitarian scientific instruments,
Speaker 3: where it would just be you know, you just want
Speaker 3: the information necessary. These are the navigation lines you would use,
Speaker 3: These are the coastlines. So I look at all this
Speaker 3: and I sort of interpret it to mean that, you know,
Speaker 3: in European maps of centuries prior, if you had a
Speaker 3: map of the coast of South America or something, it's
Speaker 3: maybe more likely that this would be a kind of decorative,
Speaker 3: educational or status item to maybe to stimulate the imagination,
Speaker 3: or maybe in a more profane sense, to show off
Speaker 3: your wealth and worldliness or something like that. But by
Speaker 3: the early eighteenth century, c maps were increasingly viewed simply
Speaker 3: as tools for navigation, in which case you might not
Speaker 3: want a lot of extra decoration all over the place,
Speaker 3: kind of like you wouldn't want the marked face of
Speaker 3: a tape measure to be covered in all kinds of
Speaker 3: elaborate illustrations and words.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great point. Reminds me
Speaker 1: a bit of time pieces, particularly wristwatches, where you'll see
Speaker 1: plenty of examples of very functional time pieces that are
Speaker 1: all about giving you the exact time, and in other
Speaker 1: cases the time piece might be a little more stylistic,
Speaker 1: sometimes so stylistic that it interferes with your ability to
Speaker 1: accurately read what time it is. Yes, and it's not
Speaker 1: to say that either approach is wrong. They just have
Speaker 1: slightly different intentions and a different focus on the actual
Speaker 1: information that is being presented.
Speaker 3: So this makes me think that when there is a
Speaker 3: case of horror vacui as a motivation, just like a
Speaker 3: desire to fill in blank spaces with stuff you know,
Speaker 3: there can actually be a lot of sort of submotivations
Speaker 3: to that motivation. It might be because you are trying
Speaker 3: to make the thing you're creating appear more valuable. Maybe
Speaker 3: you're trying to attract the eye of a buyer. It
Speaker 3: might be because you literally just want to contain more information.
Speaker 3: It might be because you want to disguise a lack
Speaker 3: of information of a significant sort. Or maybe it's just
Speaker 3: because you enjoy being artistically expressive and you want to
Speaker 3: fill lots of things in with you know, just kind
Speaker 3: of exciting detail to stimulate the imagination, all of which
Speaker 3: could essentially manifest is the same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but how about you personally, Joe, do you think
Speaker 1: maps today should have more monsters on them?
Speaker 3: I think Google Maps specifically should have more monsters on it, like,
Speaker 3: you know, because that could be that could be filled
Speaker 3: in dynamically, right, you know, the monsters are roaming around.
Speaker 3: That would add an interesting level of puzzle and obstacle
Speaker 3: to your daily the boring navigation tasks. I got to
Speaker 3: get to so and so's house or the post office
Speaker 3: or whatever, but there is a Leviathan in the way,
Speaker 3: and maybe I got to take a new route.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, just speaking of routes. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: use these various GPS powered mapping devices when we drive around,
Speaker 1: and I often find that if I stop at a
Speaker 1: light or a traffic sign, that's when the pop ups
Speaker 1: come for me. Pop ups for like sub sandwich shops
Speaker 1: and so forth. Maybe if I could pay just a
Speaker 1: little bit each month, instead of getting the sub the
Speaker 1: submarine sandwich pop up, I could just get a random
Speaker 1: monster from the history of maps, some sort of strange,
Speaker 1: pig faced, Shrek eared monstrosity rising up out of the highway. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Why go to the sub shop when you could go
Speaker 3: be devoured by a cockatrice?
Speaker 1: Yeah, or at least giving me the ability to report it.
Speaker 1: If enough people are reporting the thing, then there must
Speaker 1: be something going on.
Speaker 3: Okay, does that do it for today?
Speaker 1: For part two? I believe so. Yeah. I think we've
Speaker 1: filled this one into the margins here, but we'll be
Speaker 1: back with a third episode on the topic, so hey,
Speaker 1: check back with us. Then. Just a reminder that core
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind air and Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 1: On Mondays we do listener mail, On Wednesdays we do
Speaker 1: a short form monster fact or artifact episode, and on
Speaker 1: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
Speaker 1: about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
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Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
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