It's illegal to drive while you're on your mobile phone, so why do galleries ask you to listen on headsets while you look at pictures? There is plenty of evidence - intuitive, anecdotal (scientific too, for all I know) - to show that concentrated listening and concentrated looking interfere with one another. Is it the money the headsets bring in? Or is it part of a general tendency for every medium to insist on a presence whenever communication takes place? It's not that the combination never works (take Don Giovanni), but listening in the dark and looking in silence are wonderful too.

LRB 18 November 2010 | PDF Download