An exhibition without a soundtrack

Both texts are newly written practice sources about invented people, places or projects.

Text One: An original fictional visitor's account of an image exhibition.

The introductory film played without its usual music during the morning session. Captions remained, and a notice explained that the change was deliberate. I first noticed shoes crossing the floor and a door closing behind me. The exhibition had lost one soundtrack, not become a place with no sound.

Without the music, I spent longer looking at a repeated movement on screen. My friend found the same sequence harder to follow because she had used the music to recognise a change. We described these different responses on the feedback cards rather than deciding which of us had experienced the film correctly.

Later sessions restored the normal soundtrack. The programme listed both formats in advance. I returned to a short section and found that I watched it differently again. Neither version had revealed the one permanent way the images had to feel.

Text Two: An original report on a different invented gallery's quiet-format trial.

The gallery tested sessions in which selected background audio was reduced or switched off. It did not describe them as silent. Staff explained which elements changed and which remained, including spoken explanations in some rooms and ordinary visitor movement.

The report separated preference from a universal judgement of quality. Some visitors could concentrate more easily on images; others missed cues that helped them connect parts of a display. Feedback therefore identified the particular room and format instead of asking only whether the whole gallery was better.

Advance listings gave people a choice of sessions. Written explanations accompanied displays whose audio normally supplied essential context. The gallery's final review treated the trial as another way to encounter the collection, not a claim that every sound was unnecessary or that all visitors should prefer its removal.

Synthesise what you learn from both texts about changing or removing background audio in an exhibition.