Sonic Possible Worlds, Revised Edition: Hearing the Continuum of Sound

265 Pages·2021·1.769 MB·English

by  Salomé Voegelin (Author)

Sonic Possible
Worlds,
Revised Edition
i
SELECTED PRAISE FOR
SONIC POSSIBLE WORLDS
AND SONIC POSSIBLE
WORLDS, REVISED EDITION
‘Salomé Voegelin is a brilliant and subtle thinker about sound and music,
so Sonic Possible Worlds: Hearing the Continuum of Sound, Revised
Edition is a deeply explored and essential study of the necessity of listening,
of openly absorbing what sound tells us of our shared world. . . . [She]
generously maps many ways of practicing listening to sonic worlds and of
sharing access to the ever-expanding “possible world” of sound-life, then
goes further, leaping beyond our physical and conceptual limits, diving into
sound we cannot hear but which affects us, becoming part of our
apprehensible world and of our learning how to live within it.’
Annea Lockwood, Composer and Professor Emeritus, Vassar College, USA
‘In this highly anticipated and essential second edition, Voegelin thinks
about bodies and presents with rigor and extraordinary clarity the way
sound may open us up to the plural possibility of bodily existence.
Effortlessly interlacing phenomenology, feminist and queer theories, and
weaving together sound thought and practice, while remaining precise yet
accessible, the author invites us to listen to our own and each other’s
bodies, enjoy their transforming, hybrid and even monstrous capacities,
and discover the emancipatory force of their soundings.’
Mikhail Karikis, Film Director and Professor, MIMA School of Art &
Design, Teesside University, UK
‘Voegelin’s Sonic Possible Worlds … 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
ii
Sonic Possible
Worlds,
Revised Edition
Hearing the Continuum of Sound
SALOM É VOEGELIN
iii
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
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50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks
of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in the United States of America 2021

Copyright © Salomé Voegelin, 2021

Cover design by Clare Turner
Cover image: Silver Birch © Clare Scully / www.thequietrevolution.co.uk

For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. ix constitute an extension
of this copyright page.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
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this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret
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but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: HB: 9781501367618
Pbk: 9781501367625
ePDF: 9781501367649
eBook: 9781501367632

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Series: Alternate Takes: Critical Responses to Popular Music

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iv
CONTENTS
Preface to the second edition vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1 The landscape as sonic possible world 9
2 Into the world of the work: The possibility of
sound art 49
3 Sonic materialism: The sound of stones 85
4 Hearing the continuum of sound 121
5 Listening to the inaudible: The sound of unicorns 157
6 Sonic possible and impossible bodies 177
Notes 205
Bibliography 225
List of works 231
Index 233
v
vi
PREFACE TO THE
SECOND EDITION
Revisiting and revising Sonic Possible Worlds for a second edition presents
a great opportunity to re-r ead and re-t hink, fi ve years later, what I thought
possible world theory could bring to the discourse and practice of sound. It
allows me to hear what it says now and in hindsight: whether the promise
of possibilia, as critical tool and strategy to access the plurality of the world,
still holds; and to refl ect through the time gained on the consequences and
future thoughts sonic possible worlds can inspire.
I had come upon the notion of possibility serendipitously through sound
making, listening and in relation to the possible worlds of fi lm and literature.
From here, possibilia seemed a fruitful method to fi nd what and how sound
means without referring it to a visual referent by instead hearing its world
creating capacity: not what it sounds, the car, the instrument, the voice, but
what sounds as sonic materiality and sense. Possible world theory presented
an opportunity to write about listening as an audition of invisible and
mobile variants, pluralising what we think we know in a visible and certain
singularity; and engaging in ephemeral relationships rather than thinking in
products, objects or forms. Re-r eading it again this conviction remains. And
while there are reconsiderations and contradictions, past thoughts in confl ict
with present ideas, the book stands as conceptualisation of a practical world
of sound that does not pretend to write a theory but an invitation to listen,
always in the present: to hear the possibilities and impossibilities of its
writing now rather than of when the book was written.
Therefore, I have not done much to the original text beyond minor
corrections, some cuts and rewrites for clarifi cation. I did not want to take
away but add and complexify while leaving things to stand for their own
time and mine.
And so, for example, I leave the clumsy move between he and she, which
I considered a great solution to the problem of gendered defi nitions at the
time. It remains as testimony to what is possible, and thus thinkable and
acceptable at one moment, while bearing also the very impossibilities of its
time. This demonstrates the transforming and therefore possible rather than
actual nature of the written word; and refl ects also on my own voice growing
more confi dent in a feminist register that seemed impossible before.
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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The book exists and interacts in a different discursive as well as socio-
political context now. The shift in time has shifted emphasis and pertinence:
new works and texts present a thickening and challenge to its ideas, while
surprising and unexpected refi gurations expand and reframe what it said
then in a current sense.
One of these refi gurations happens in relation to the body, whose presence
in contemporary discourse and practice, as material and agential force,
inspired the addition of a sixth chapter on S onic possible and impossible
bodies . This additional chapter refocuses the writing on sonic possible
worlds on the body listening, sounding, walking, being silent, and hearing
things. It brings the ideas discussed in the original fi ve chapters in relation
to the landscape, the artwork and new materialism, as well as music and
fi nally inaudibility, into a new time and onto a new body. This is a posthuman
body that stands not as subject but as material in the continuum of things
and of the world; and that is not recognisable in a certain and pre-g iven
form and name. Instead, it sounds its invisible variants: how it is all it can
be, beyond recognition and a lexical referent, plural and transforming, but
without losing its name. To follow this refi guration and to appreciate its
refl ected time, maybe the book needs to be read backwards now: starting
with the body into the inaudible, into music, into new materialism, into the
artwork and into the landscape, to come to hear the continuum not only
between sound art and music, as the subtitle suggests, but to be able to hear
this continuum on the body as a bodied materiality, same as the world,
heard under a shared skin of sound.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This journey through Sonic Possible Worlds would not have been achievable
without the support of family, friends, and colleagues. I am grateful for the
many stimulating conversations and debates with peers, students, and
friends, and am thankful for all the guidance, feedback, and criticism that
have advanced my ideas and enabled this endeavor.
I want to especially thank David Mollin for his love and support and our
ongoing collaboration, which challenges my habits of listening and sound
making. I am immensely grateful also to Angus Carlyle and Daniela Cascella
for their close reading of the manuscript and their invaluable advice for its
revision. I want to thank Cathy Lane for always being inspiring and
encouraging, and David Toop for many conversations and much listening. I
am grateful for the continuing exchange on sound art and music with
Thomas Gardner, and appreciative of the research environment at CRiSAP
(Centre for Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice) and of my colleagues
at LCC (the London College of Communication), Chris Petter, John Wynne,
Nye Parry, Ximena Alarcó n, Ed Baxter, and Peter Cusack, whose work and
ideas nourish and challenge my own. I want to thank Lou Mallozzi for
giving me the opportunity to publicly test my fi rst sketches of a sonic
possibilia, Marcel Cobussen for enabling the publication of a sonic fi ction,
and Brandon LaBelle for inviting me to present some later thoughts. I am
very thankful for all the opportunities I had to try my ideas in public and am
very conscious of the importance that the work of the sound arts students at
LCC had on the development of my writing, and hope that in return the
ideas put forward here will help them to further their own research and
practice.
I am grateful for the vicinity of Anne Hilde-Neset in the early stages of
my research, and for the encouragement of Allen S. Weiss and the debates
with Christoph Cox. I am especially thankful also to Chris Watson, Claudia
Molitor, Francisco Ló pez, Clare Gasson, Mark Peter Wright, Mikhail
Karikis, and Signe Lidé n for their time and patience clarifying and discussing
their pieces with me, and want to mention all the artists whose works are
discussed in the book for inspiring my listening and writing through their
sounds. I would also like to thank David Barker and Ally Jane Grossan of
Continuum, Bloomsbury, for trusting me to write this book, and for giving
me the opportunity to put these ideas into the public realm. Finally, I am
ix