Inspired by its use in literary theory, film criticism and the discourse of game design, Salom? Voegelin adapts and develops possible world theory in relation to sound. David K Lewis' Possible World is juxtaposed with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's life-world, to produce a meeting of the semantic and the phenomenological at the place of listening.
The central tenet ofSonic Possible Worldsis that at present traditional musical compositions and contemporary sonic outputs are approached and investigated through separate and distinct critical languages and histories. As a consequence, no continuous and comparative study of the field is possible.
InSonic Possible Worlds, Voegelin proposes a new analytical framework that can access and investigate works across genres and times, enabling a comparative engagement where composers such as Henry Purcell and Nadia Boulanger encounter sound art works by Shilpa Gupta and Christina Kubisch and where the soundscape compositions of Chris Watson and Francisco L?pez resound in the visual worlds of Louise Bourgeois.
Salom? Voegelinis Professor of Sound at the London College of Communication, UAL, UK. An artist and writer, she is the author of
Listening to Noise and Silence(Bloomsbury, 2010) and
The Political Possibility of Sound: Fragments of Listening(Bloomsbury, 2018).
Voegelin'sSonic Possible Worldsis a rather provocative and challenging endeavor to take this necessary discussion to a high scholarly level without losing the connection with the art works themselves ... It should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in listening and the counterpart or supplement to new materialism, sonic materialism. Additionally, it is one of the few books which deals with both sound art and music, thus contributing not only to the discourse on sound studies but also offering new perspectives for musicologists. Journal of Sonic Studies
[Voegelin] proposes a new analyticlÍ
![Sonic Possible Worlds: Hearing the Continuum of Sound [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/1/0/2/2_3992706.jpg "Sonic Possible Worlds: Hearing the Continuum of Sound [Paperback]")