  We review and discuss aspects of Cosmic Voids that form the background for
our Void Galaxy Survey (see accompanying paper by Stanonik et al.). Following a
sketch of the general characteristics of void formation and evolution, we
describe the influence of the environment on their development and structure
and the characteristic hierarchical buildup of the cosmic void population. In
order to be able to study the resulting tenuous void substructure and the
galaxies populating the interior of voids, we subsequently set out to describe
our parameter free tessellation-based watershed void finding technique. It
allows us to trace the outline, shape and size of voids in galaxy redshift
surveys. The application of this technique enables us to find galaxies in the
deepest troughs of the cosmic galaxy distribution, and has formed the basis of
our void galaxy program.
