Going Solo

If the visual system and auditory system had competitive streaks, they might argue about which modality has the most compelling art. Each would be allowed to cite as examples only cases exclusively within its own modality: vision‑only versus audition‑only. This is a difficult contest to officiate. Should vision be allowed to cite all the features of visual design found in culture, such as clothes, cars, buildings, and everyday objects? If so, it would have a big leg up on audition, which is not nearly so involved in the design of our physical artifacts. Let’s agree not to include these, by virtue of an “official rule” that the art must be purchased by people for the purpose merely of enjoying the aesthetics, with no other functional benefit. That is, is it vision or audition that commands the greatest portion of the market for art and entertainment?

If you set it up in this way, audition trounces vision. Although the visual modality is found in huge markets like television, video games, and movies, these rely on audition as well. People put visual art on their walls, but that typically amounts to just a few purchases, whereas it is common to find people who own thousands of music albums. The market for the purely visual arts is miniscule compared to that for audition. This is counterintuitive, because if you ask most of us to name the most beautiful things we know of, we are likely to respond with a list of visuals. But when we vote with our pocketbooks, audition wins the solo artist contest. Why is that?

One possible explanation is simply that it is easier to carry on with the chores of life while music is in the background, whereas the visual arts inherently get in the way. Try driving or working or throwing a dinner party while admiring the Mona Lisa. But I suspect it is more than this. If it was merely because of the difficulty of enjoying visual arts while having a life, one might expect us to want to stare at beautiful visual art all day, if only we had nothing else pressing to do. Most of us, however, don’t exactly fancy the idea of watching visual images all day (without sound). Listening to music all day, however, sounds quite charming! And, in fact, many of us do spend our days listening to music.

The stark inequality of vision and audition in this competition for “best solo performer” in the arts is due to a fundamental ecological asymmetry. When we see things in the world, those things are typically making noise. Seeing without hearing therefore feels strange, unnatural, or as if it is missing something. But hearing without seeing is commonplace, because we hear all sorts of things we cannot see–when our eyes are closed, when the source is behind us, when the source is occluded, or when the environment is dark. Sights nearly always come with sounds, but sounds very commonly come without sights. And that’s why audition is happy to be a solo artist, but vision isn’t. Music is the single‑modality artist extraordinaire.

While we now have some idea why there’s no solely visual art that rivals music, we still have barely begun our quest to understand why music is so compelling that we are willing to purchase thousands of albums.