Horror Vacui, Part 2

has manifestations in the world of physics and the physical sciences. Uh, and and figures into the history of how we conceptualize space in the vacuum, but it also has manifestations in the world of psychology and in the world of art. In the last episode we focus mainly on art, and

we're going to pick up with talking about art today. Yeah, and uh, Joe, I don't know if this was the case with you, but I also found this to be This is a really fun topic to research, but also at times a slightly challenging one, do in part to just how frequently the term horror vakoee is invoked in papers,

sometimes at the drop of a hat. Yes, this happens with us sometimes with with like you are searching for uh, writings about a concept, but instead what you will find is a lot of writings that use that concept as a metaphor for what they want to talk about, right right, So it seems to be the case that if you want to find something that has just the the the invocation of the term at least a tangential connection to

horror vakoe, then you can find it. For instance, Uh, if you want a paper then invokes some horror vakoee and Spanish horror icon Paul Nashy, Well you can do it. I found three of them with just a feel a good search. Yeah. Um, and you know these are paper where there there's not it's not the core um thing they're going after. But at some point or another they're going to use this term to describe a particular artist or that artist's work, or perhaps even you know, counter

examples to what a particular artist was doing. So it seems kind of unavoidable, especially given just how you know, how common this aspect seems to be to human perception and creation. The idea that you know, you have minimalism, you have maximalism and you know, the various spaces between. Yes, this is all true, and I at least encountered another difficulty with reading about horror akawee, which is that I've noticed the term is used very differently, uh, sometimes with

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

Braxton Solderman. And in this case, Solderman, I think would not use the term horror akawee to apply to in general works that are busy or highly decorated. I mean, there are tons of things that would be very busy, highly decorated, you know, densely detailed works of art that would not get this term. Instead, he would use it specifically to refer to the motivation driving cases where you would judge busy art or busy design to not be

a thoughtful and effective design choice. So the quote goes horror. Akawee is the fear of empty space that results in the over marking of visual space, excessive decoration that threatens to overwhelm what is being decorated, the stuffing of gaps in say Jura with further representation. Uh So, it's not just anything that's busy or crowded, but it's things that

are busy or crowded in a kind of compulsive, uncontrolled way. Okay, okay, so uh so what Sotoman is saying here then would be that's something like, Um, I don't know, the works of Irving Norman or one of these other artists we discussed in Part one who are trying to make some comment or create art that in some way invokes a sense of chaos or disorder. Um, it wouldn't necessarily apply to what they're doing, because it is a like a definite choice. But it might apply to the outsider art

or folk card of say Howard Finster. No, I don't think he would necessarily apply the term to them. I mean, I don't know what he personally would apply to. I think he's just saying that whoever is using this term, however you're using it, it would be applying to things that you think are excessive or overmarked, whatever that means to you. Okay, okay, Yeah, So he's making a distinction then between uh and and of course vowing to um

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

to say, and are trying to like fit it all in. Yeah. Possibly, Or of course, it wouldn't just have to be representing, um, you know, chaos or disorder, could also be representing richness or anything, you know, whatever the reason is for the infilling of detail. Uh, it would be something that is done on purpose or done for a reason, rather than something that has done compulsively, maybe driven by a kind

of anxiety about leaving blank or uniform space. Uh. And and that latter, since the one driven by horror vakuy is in this definition, one that detracts from the effect of the piece. One that quote threatens to over elm what is being decorated. So again, I think this author would probably not use the term to refer to things that are busy or crowded as a result of a like well considered deliberate choice by the artist or designer. It would refer to things where the infilling seems haphazard

or unwarranted or ineffective. So, while I am usually quite partial too busy detail rich artwork, uh, there are examples I can think of where I can look at an artwork or design choice and say, yeah, I think this just looks like compulsive behavior that seems driven by a kind of discomfort with blank space. And one example I would agree with characterizing this way is cited in the same lecture by chet van Deuser I mentioned a minute ago.

It's the practice of line filling in medieval manuscripts, and so maybe this will help illustrate So uh, this is uh, This this page I want to show you rob is from a manuscript known as Walter's one thirteen, which is a late thirteenth century Latin Psalter Assaulter, meaning a book that contains the biblical Book of Psalms, and it's from the region of France that was then Flanders. Now you know, I love my medieval manuscripts with zany margins. I want

donkeys playing trumpets. I want armored war rabbits locked in battle with naked men writing centipede dogs. I want it all. But even with that predisposition, I think I I would be critical of what we see in some of the pages of Walters one thirteen, such as the one sided by Van Duzer. And this is where there are illustrations

intruding into the very lines of the text itself. So the issue is that when a line of text does not stretch all the way to the margin, when it does not fill out the column, uh, the artists here, I don't know if it was the copyist or the rubricator or somebody else, literally fills in the rest of the line with a rectangular illustration of some kind, so it might be a mouse head or just some vines with red and gold leaves, or big old p hen uh.

I like these types of illustrations, but this does seem kind of excessive to me, like it would actually make the text harder to read and detract from its effect, and it just kind of makes the page feel cluttered. And like there's no space to breathe. Kind of going back to our episodes on the history of the paragraph and the the importance of blank space in prose text, I would agree with the caveat to our eyes reading across the centuries. Well, yeah, I'm talking about my opinion.

Yeah yeah, but yes too as a modern viewer looking at this, Uh, the p hens and the strange dog creatures are a bit distracting. Um not not that I can read the actual text anyway. Now right, well, well, to connect again with the paragraphs episode, I mean, here we see very little spacing between the parts of the text itself. Like the text is also very crammed and crowded in. Yeah yeah, so, I mean maybe to the original creators of this page and the original intended readers

of this page, like this is opening things up. They're like, hey, I'm giving you some space. That's what the dog is, That's what the the bird with the human head and the dunce cap is about. That is a good bird. It reminds me a bit um. And this is coming back to like, you know, cinematic u um examples and parody of cinematic examples. But there's an episode of Futurama where Zoidbird's uncle Harold Zoid an old timey uh cinema

director who made like silent holographic pictures. Um, he's directing a new film and he's at one point he's he says, people, people, please, just because it's a dramatic scene doesn't mean you can't do a little comedy in the background. Um. And it's you know, it's referring to I guess the the you know to To modern viewers, they often busy nature and the frantic nature of say old silent films. Oh yeah, yeah.

So anyway, on this, like Walter's one thirteen, a person might feel that this counts as horror akay in the critical sense, in the sense of overmarking or excessive decoration that sort of threatens to overwhelm that which is being decorated.

But to come back to my point about usage, it seems that while some authors use the term exclusively in this sense, like a in some sense a critical statement or a critical statement about the motivation driving certain design choices, it's also sometimes used more generically without a spirit of criticism that I can detect, and would just be descriptive like it would refer to any ardor design without a lot of blank space, even if the author making the

statement believes that such a design is effective or thoughtful, or well considered or beautiful. So I guess this can create confusion when the term is invoked about whether it's being used with a critical connotation or not. Is it just say it does horror aka we just describe and artwork that is busy and filled in with detail to all the edges, or is it a class of motivation to create certain artworks of this type, specifically artworks that

are not as good as others? Now? Um, you know, discussing though the way that sometimes the term is used to depict, you know, like primitive impulse, or or to describe a quality of more ancient forms of art versus

modern forms. Um. I do think it's helpful to look at at other examples from other parts of the world at other times, and I was trying to think of, like, well, what's a good one that's you know, a little bit different from from what we've we've looked at in the first episode, And I kept coming back to uh Tibetan art, particularly in Tibetan Buddhist art that I imagine when I even mentioned this, like certain images are coming to mind, and these image is that come to mind maybe indeed

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

would be I think entirely imaginary here. But um, but it's interesting, I think to look at at work that you might see as as you know, very full or even very busy and sort of described like why is it like that? And uh and and what does it have to do with the original purpose and context of

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

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

with a sense of cosmic abundance. Yes, and many of them seem to me like they are not only overflowing with detail, but overflowing with uh sort of different levels of focus. Like there's a lot of different layers of detail that you know, things that are kind of like zoomed out versus zoomed in, if that makes any sense. Yeah, Yeah, you do feel like there's a sense of zooming in and zooming out. Um. Many pieces will have like a kind of central focus and you can almost feel like

some sort of of a map. It can almost feel like some sort of and this is where we get into some of the actual purpose here, some sort of educational document that indeed there is information that is being relayed here. Uh. And you know, this is one of two important factors to keep in mind regarding why these images are so again cosmically abundant. Uh. First of all, is Fisher points out esoteric Buddhism, like Vadriyana, Buddhism was

andy as a complex system. One comparison that I've seen elsewhere is that you might think of these forms of Buddhism as a kind of Buddhist super science, a kind of advanced spiritual technology. Fisher points out that it essentially was was a means of accelerating the path toward enlightenment, condensing the work of eons into a single mortal lifespan.

And at the same time, there was still like a sense of urgency to the practice, Fisher stresses, because ultimately you're dealing with like the trajectory of the human soul. So there was a great deal to be taught, a great deal to guide one through, a great deal as a learner to absorb and it was more than a written text or even a robust monastic tradition could do

on its own. Fisher rights of the following quote. The need to harness the myriad powers and to organize the parts of this vast system into a manageable whole required a large and complex visual system of support and gave rise to the ritual instruments and images that have given the Adriana its distinctive flavor, as well as the huge

array of deities representing the tremendous range of powers and practices. Okay, so in some sense, the detail rich nature of a lot of this artwork could be related to the sort of the vastness and complexity of the belief system underlying it exactly. Yeah, Yeah, we're dealing with various images and objects here that are not necessarily merely decoration but also

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

the unreal. I'm reminded of the maps, the many wonderful maps have been created over the years for Dante's Inferno and Um and uh and and the other books in the Divine Comedy, where there is a fantastic physical realm that has to be created there, but it's also just loaded with information and loaded with all sorts of stuff, and it can be very helpful when you're, say, reading The Inferno, but also if you try and fit everything into the map, it could conceivably be overwhelming. Thank thank

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

to be generally tied to particular locations within it. As Fisher points out, the interior of the Tibetan monastery is elaborate with full wall paintings that quote transform those rooms into spiritual environments which surround and even overwhelmed the worshiper with large, expressive displays of the many Buddhist worlds. And he stresses that this is all in stark contrast to the world outside the monastery, typically defined by the quote

often bear in wind swept Tibetan landsk um. That's interesting. So he's saying that in many of these places, if you were to go outside the monastery, you'd be greeted with an image of the world that is quite beautiful, but maybe not busy with detail or busy with lots of little things populating it. It It would be often a very I don't know what the word is, A kind of smooth topography. I mean, I guess not smooth, because it would be mountainous, but you know, not a lot

of uh forests and cities and so forth. Right, Yeah, Like I included an image here of the Debatten Plateau,

and it's particularly gorgeous view. And at the same time, I'm sure that one could probably find individual vistas uh that don't feel is open in the Debat Plateau but but I feel like this kind of I feel like this has a certain logic to it, like the idea that, first of all, going back to the previous comment, like, on one hand, you have information encoded in the work, but also it has to do with this awe inspiring transition out of the mundane world and into the inner

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

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

to present a contrast of maximalism. Likewise, of the world outside the monastery is by one definition or another maximalist or busy, then perhaps we crave the quiet, the simple, and the minimal within the experience of place or painting or film or musical composition. That's very interesting, I could

see that. So if yeah, if you may you live in a in a busy city center, the sacred space you retreat to, you would want to have a lot of empty or uniform space in it to give you a sense of of rest maybe, Whereas if you live in a more pastoral environment, you might want to retreat to a sacred space that is full of just a busy,

rich detail and complexity. Yeah. And at the same time, though, I realize that it might still be entirely subjective, because I can easily imagine, say, you know, an individual living in the big city and they're going into a a sacred space or museum space, and like, what is their relationship to the world on the outside is is it is it busy and um an abundant or is it

is there an emptiness to it? And therefore they want something more full on the inside, like the sacred space should give them an energy that they feel is lacking in the world outside. Uh, Like I, like I said, I guess it could go either way. Depending on what an individual's view of the mundane world is. Yeah, that

that's a really interesting observation, though, I wonder about that now. Yeah, like take the various male wolf locations for example, those are those are certainly kind of maximalist experiences you don't go in. I mean, you know, it's it's it's not just an overabundance of images. There's you know, various artists, various styles and so forth. Um, it's not just wall to wall. But generally I have found when I when I in the one that I visited, I left feeling

like I had experienced a lot. That's interesting because I when I went I found it kind of RESTful as well. I think maybe it has to do with the dim lighting in there or there there are plenty of lights, but they're not bright white light. Um, and uh in the kind of soothing sonic atmospheres. I don't know. Yeah, So anyway, you know, I bring all this up more or less just raise additional questions and bring up additional examples.

But we'd obviously love to hear from folks out there who have thoughts on all of this related to their experiences in museums and sacred spaces, etcetera. Now, I mentioned earlier that I was going to come back to chet VanDuzer Uh, and this relates to fear of the void in art. I came across some work by previous show guest chet Van Duser on the role of horror vakawi

in map making. So if you didn't hear that episode from a few years back, chet vand User is an American historian of cartography, and he came on the show several years back to talk about why and how cartographers of the past would so frequently add sea monsters to their maps, and one possible explanation for the proliferation of sirens and slyly marine serpent kings out in the deep water is horror vakaye on the part of the map maker.

This would be the version that's not just merely descriptive of something that's filling in details, but a description of a motivation on the part of the artist or map maker. The uh. There's an abhorrence for blankness that goes in the case of maps, beyond just the creation of monsters, but to all kinds of extraneous infilling of stuff in the watery corners of the page. Or in the deep middles of continents on the page, and so I was looking at a digital curation of examples on the Stanford

Libraries website. This is for the Barry Lawrence Rudermann Conference on Cartography, and there are some explanatory materials by Chet

van Douser. So he writes that despite the fact that some previous scholars had had cast doubt on whether horror akawee was ever a major influence on map makers, he argues that whether you frame it as a positive desire for excess decoration or a negative aversion to blank space, it seems pretty clear that horror akawee of one kind or another was an important pressure in the design of European maps from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century,

at least four some cartographers. Because this was not universal, he also shows many examples of maps that were perfectly content to leave vast areas blank, often the the interiors of continental spaces unknown to the map maker, or vast ocean spaces. Now, rob I thought the first example vendors

are selects that we would look at. Here is the typus aurarum mary timarum gin a a longren and this is a map created by the Dutch cartographer Young Hoygan von lynn Schoten, who lived fifteen sixty three to sixteen eleven. I believe this map is from fifte and it depicts the South Atlantic and the western coast of Africa. Now the ocean takes up it looks like at least three quarters of the map. But the ocean here is absolutely overflowing with stuff, to the point that it's kind of

funny to look at. There are inset drawings of the mountains on St. Helena and a inshin island. There is a compass or multiple compasses. There is a drawing of three ships being visited by a sea monster. I can't tell if the c monster is attacking the ships or just saying hello, Rob. Maybe you can render a judgment on that illustration in a moment. But there is also lots of absurdly florid lettering on the names of places.

Will you just look at this oceanus? Uh what? I can't even read the word it's so there's so much swirling on the letters. Get get, let's let the podcasts or something. Yeah, there's a lot going on here. And the I mean, it almost looks like you've you've gotten you've got pop ups occurring on the map. You need to close out so you can see the rest of the ocean here. That's very yeah, yeah, you want to click the excess. Uh, but let's get a good look

at this sea monster. Now, it looks kind of like it's a giant green fish with red fins and the head of I don't know, what would you call that, kind of like a pig calf head. Yeah, yeah, it's very mammalion. But it's got the angry eyes it's got it's got attack eyes. And is it attacking the ships or is it just kind of flopping around for them to look at? Not quite clear. Yeah, I don't know. It looks it looks, I don't looks a little sweet to me, like it's just kind of mine in its

own business. But maybe no, no, wait, I'm looking at It depends how you Okay, it depends how you look at it. At first, when I looked at this this particular monster, I thought its head was sort of to the side, And now I see it as it was intended. Yes, it does look angry and looks more like a pig. Whereas the way I was seeing it at first it looked more like an otter. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw that you were looking at the more zoomed out

image that does look more otter like. Yeah, but when you you see a little closer, you can tell, yeah, it has this kind of still mammalion but angry and perhaps threatening the ships. But okay, this first example, there is just so much illustration in the ocean here, and just a lot inset text. The boxes boxes of text. I think they're called cartouches, maybe, just like elaborately decorated boxes with like those baroque museum frames illustrated around them

that have you know, they say something in them. Uh. Now, let's look at another map. This is one that of and user selects that is called a New Plane and Exact Map of America by Robert Walton who lived sixteen eighteen to sixty eight. I think this map is from sixteen sixty and uh, let me flag a little lall here at the word plane in its title, because again, it's just it's so much stuff. The oceans are filled

with ships, sea monsters, random blocks of text. The border of the map is stuffed with illustrations of landmarks and explorers and what the map maker believed were the representations of clothing of various native people's. There is even sort of a guess at the coast of Antarctica, though I want to say Antarctica was not discovered until the nineteenth century. This is just a random line of coasts south of Cape Horn that has labeled unknown lands. So it's just

sort of a guess there's probably some land down here. Wow. This Yeah, this map is a lot to take in. UM. I wouldn't say that it's particularly pleasing to the eye. It has the feeling of a publication like UM in the sense that they said, well, we've got some extra space on here, let's get some more content on this map. You know what it looks. It kind of looks like do you ever have those highly informational place mats when you were a kid? Yep, yep, you're gonna eat your

spaghetti on this new plane exact map of America. Yeah, this would work great as a place matter. Yeah. Yes. But Van dews Are, writing of Walton's map, says quote, it is tempting to think that the maps busy appearance attracted and held the is of his customers and thus

helped increase sales. So that's an interesting consideration. It's possible that a desire to sell maps could have driven some horror vakay in cartographers, because maybe a map seems more valuable if it is filled with lots of illustrations and text. Maybe it seems less valuable if the places where you you know, you don't really have any geographical information to add or just blank Yeah. I can see. It's kind of like with the illuminated manuscripts. So we're discussing earlier.

I mean, if you were paying for one of these or commissioning, when you might say, hey, I thought this thing was going to be illuminated. Where is the illumination I paid for? Um? Yeah, and there's a lot of content added here. And yet at the same time, the north part of America has a fair amount of white space, trap white space in it here. Oh it does. Yeah,

that that's the the interior continent. In fact, some of the other examples elsewhere that VanDuzer sites to show cases where map makers were clearly not afraid to leave blank space. A lot of that blank spaces, like in the center of the Asian continent, so they'll represent you know, Europe and Africa, and like the southern coast of the Asian mainland, and then like all up inside there, it's just a

vast blankness because they just didn't know what was there. Yeah, it looked like in this particular map they added some text under the north part of America, but they just didn't have even enough to fill. I have a few pictures of animals, but ultimately there's a clearly a lot of a lot that's unknown at the time of this naps making. Thankank, Thank alright, I want to look at

one more of Van Duzer's examples. The next one is a map by Henri Abraham Chatelan called I'm not sure how to say this French, but I think it's like cart trey cure use de la mare de Sud. This is Amsterdam, seventeen nineteen. So this is more like an attempt to This is not quite a map of the entire world, but it is a map of a lot of the world. So it has North America, South America, half of Africa, half of Europe, and then the eastern part of the Asian continent. And then it's got a

lot of ocean in it. So it's got the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic ocean, and once again there's all kinds of stuff sort of crowding in from the edges. In fact, Rob, I would almost say this adheres to the exact inverse of your rule about about blank space in like type setting newspapers, where you know, white space was okay if it's sort of connected to the oceans at the outer edge of the page. You just don't want trapped white

space here. All of the illustrations and boxes and Cartouchian seemed to be just pouring in from the edges of the map, if that makes sense. Yeah, Yeah, it's it's it's it's very interesting to look at. And yeah, and I'm sure lot of this has to do with the clearly visible trade routes that are marked, like you don't want to throw your copious amounts of illustrations on top of that better, but they work well to fill in

these areas where ships are not navigating between the continents. Yeah, and I really like Vanduzer's observation about this map quote the great profusion of inset maps and scenes along the northern and southern edges of Andrichdalan seventeen nineteen very curious map of the Pacific show the cartographer's strong desire to avoid empty space, and more specifically, to conceal his ignorance of what lay in the extreme northern and southern reaches

of the world. The south is essentially tiled over with inset maps that include ethnographic scenes in the north. Note that he conceals his ignorance of northwestern North America with a series of portraits of explorers. That's a very clever trick, and honestly, I don't know if I would have noticed it if induser hadn't pointed out. Sometimes an abundance of extraneous detail can be used to distract the audience from the absence of significant or useful detail. In other words,

business can be used to hide emptiness. So on a map, this would mean that you might be less inclined to, you know, pipe up and say, hey, wait a minute, what islands can be found in this region of the Pacific Ocean, Or wait a minute, what is the shape of the northwest coast of North America. You might not notice to ask that question because the map doesn't just

sort of like go blank in these places. Instead, it is plastered with like Magellan and Vespucci heads and what appeared to be somewhat inaccurate drawings of Mesoamerican pyramids with human sacrifices happening all around them. So it's just adding in these illustrations in places where the author or or the map maker uh doesn't actually know what they should depict in an informational sense in the map itself. Yes, this close up that you included for me of the

human sacrifice scene is quite ridiculous and monstrous. And I guess thee an individual with a face on his stomach in the background as well. Is that what it is? Yeah, that's confusing. I don't know what that means. Yeah, I mean when he shows up? You know your illustration is is is well off the mark when it comes to realistic depiction of cultural practices. Is this going to help me navigate the Pacific? I'm not sure, but this will

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

It is like a common trick of persuasion in an argumentation. Uh. For example, you can see see it in courtrooms if you don't have very good evidence to cite in support of your case. Instead, you just say a lot of stuff. You just try to rapidly lay out a bunch of facts or claims that sound vaguely on topic. And if you say enough stuff fast enough, it could be hard for the jury or the audience to stop and analyze each thing you said and think, wait a minute, does

this actually prove what you're trying to prove? Is? Does this lead to your conclusion? Instead, like you use a blizzard of statements to create the impression that you have made an argument, you hide the core vacuity of your case behind a hieronymous bosh painting of talk. Mm hmm. Perhaps it's kind of like with the map versus the painting.

It's more detectable when there's like a definite purpose or intended purpose to the answer, because it's like one thing to come up to someone and say, hey, what is art?

And then you might get a really rambling response, but you kind of should right, But if it's more like, hey, um, if you come to your boss and be like, what are my duties for the coming month or how is my performance over the last quarter, if there are a lot of add ons and pop ups in that particular answer, then yeah, it feels like you didn't really get a

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

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

the coastlines. So I look at all this and I sort of interpret it to mean that, you know, in in European maps of centuries prior, if you had a map of the coast of South America or something, it's maybe more likely that this would be a kind of decorative, educational, or status item to maybe to stimulate the imagination, or maybe in a more profane sense, to show off your

wealth and worldliness or something like that. But by the early eighteenth century, c maps were increasingly viewed simply as tools for navigation, in which case you might not want a lot of extra decoration all over the place, kind of like you wouldn't want the marked face of a tape measure to be covered in all kinds of elaborate

illustrations and words. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a great It reminds me a bit of time pieces, particularly wrist watches, where you know you'll you'll see plenty of examples of very functional time pieces that are all about giving you the exact time, and in other cases the time piece might be a little more stylistic, sometimes so stylistic that it interferes with your ability to accurately read what time it is. Yes, and It's not to say that either

approach is wrong. They just have different slightly different intentions and a different focus on the actual information that is being presented. So this makes me think that when there is a case of horror vakawy as a motivation, just like a desire to fill in blank spaces with stuff, you know, there can actually be a lot of uh, sort of sub motivations to that motivation. It might be because you are trying to make the thing you're creating

appear more valuable. Maybe you're trying to attract the eye of a buyer. It might be because you literally just want to contain more information. It might be because you want to disguise a lack of information of a significant sort. Or maybe it's just because you enjoy being artistically expressive and you want to fill lots of things in with you know, just kind of exciting detail to stimulate the imagination,

all of which could essentially manifest as the same thing. Yeah, but how about you personally, Joe, do you think maps today should have more monsters on them? I think Google Maps specifically should have more monsters on it, uh, Like, you know, because that could be that could be filled in dynamically, right, you know the monsters are roaming around. That would add an interesting level of puzzle and obstacles

here your daily boring navigation tasks. I gotta get to so and so's house or the post office or whatever, but there is a Leviathan in the way, and uh, maybe I gotta take a new route. Yeah, I mean, just speaking of routes. Yeah, we have we we use these various GPS powered mapping devices when we drive around, and I often find that if I stop at a light or a traffic sign. Uh, that's when the pop ups come for make pop ups for like sub sandwich

shops and so forth. Uh. Maybe if I could pay just a little bit each month instead of getting the sub the submarine sandwich pop up, I could just get a random monster from uh from from the history of maps, some sort of strange, pig faced, shrek eared monstrosity rising up out of the highway. Yeah. Why go to the sub shop when you could go be devoured by a cockatrice? Yeah, or at least giving the ability to report it. If enough people are reporting the thing, then there must be

something going on. Okay, does that do it for today? For Part two, I believe. So yeah, I think we've we've we've filled this one into the margins here, but we'll be back with a third episode on the topic, so hey, check back with us. Then. Just a reminder that core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind air and Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays

and Thursdays. On Monday's we do listener mail, on Wednesday's we do a short form amster fact or artifact episode, and on Friday's we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Huge thanks to our audio producer J J. Pauseway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.