Sonic Possible Worlds: Hearing the Continuum of Sound

[Voegelin] proposes a new analytical framework that can access and investigate works across genres and times, enabling a comparative engagement… A useful aesthetic manifesto on sound and textual photography that will no doubt provoke meaningful debate on epistemology and aesthetics. – Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture

The work is a rigorous exploration of ‘soundscapes’, putting a huge number of different nuanced areas under the microscope… the ‘landscape’ as a privileged dimension in which to test a methodology of listening and render its different possibilities textually; the ‘sound artwork’ and the world it creates; the concept of ‘sonic materialism’; and finally the ‘continuum of sound’. Voegelin [even] dares to analyse ‘listening to the inaudible’, venturing into what only our mind can create. – —Neural magazine

The emphasis is on a complex and extensive theoretical reflection that is both thoughtful and promising… The quality (and ambition) of Sonic Possible Worlds lies precisely in that it inspires a continued discussion of the theory of listening and artistic work with sound. Given that other theoretical discussions of sound art often emphasize physical materiality while also pronouncing skepticism about the phenomenology, the angle of Voegelin’s book is quite refreshing. – Rune Søchting, Seismograf/DMT (Bloomsbury Translation)

Listening is an important sensory process through which one receives the feeling of ‘being there’: the experience of presence in a rapidly changing spatial-temporal world. Using a sensitive phenomenological approach, Salomé Voegelin leads the reader through sonic worlds (everyday events, sound art, music) with the aim of raising awareness of existential questions about the inaudible, invisible ‘being’ that the feeling of ‘being there’ normally makes tangible only as a ‘Quod’ (what it can be) but not as a ‘Quid’ (what it is). Voegelin’s book is an essential contribution to the current discourse in aesthetics. – —Prof. Dr. Helga de la Motte-Haber, Technische Universität Berlin, and editor of Klangkunst. Die gedanklichen und geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen (1999)

Sound is like a dream – fleeting and difficult to remember and describe. Sonic Possible Worlds is a grand tour through the depths of ways of listening and responding. In these pages we find the making of auditory language that can balance with visual language to bring forward the sonic underpinnings of our lives and dreams. The structure of life is both audible and in audible. These listening possibilities help us to hear our way to new understandings. – —Pauline Oliveros, Founder, Deep Listening Institute, Ltd.