Sonic Possible Worlds is a phenomenological study of how we perceive sound and its possibilities. How the generative interpretation of the subjective in the auditory cortex becomes the objective through the reader’s auditory imagination. Of what it might have been that Voegelin describes in the book, or might go on to hear as a possibility of her words in the present auditory environment of her writing. This book is a continuation of the project first put forward in Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art continuing her enquiries into listening to the space sounds build in passing. Voegelin puts forward the notion of a continuum of sound.

The idea and aims of the book are set forth over five chapters. The first two chapters try the rationale of Sonic Possible Worlds as a tool to access and inhabit the acoustic environment and the sound artwork, respectively. The last three chapters apply and develop this method and pursue the notion of a continuum of sound through a sonic materialism into music and finally the inaudible. A focus is placed on how this framework relates on listening to the soundscape, the every day acoustic environment, field recording, phonographic works, as well as soundscape installations and compositions. The second chapter moves the phenomenological possibilism explained in the landscape into the world of the physical, looking at artwork to extend the metaphor of the environment. The third chapter moves from the world of the physical work to that of materiality. Pursuing the notion of a sonic materialism considering its experience and how it guides us into meaning, truth, reality and language. This chapter aims to establish the idea of an aesthetic possibilism to make a contribution, from the invisible materiality of sound towards the development of a contemporary materialism. The fourth chapter invites the reader to listen for the possibilty of sound in musical work. Listeners are encouraged to abandon the boundaries between sound art and music, to disregard the restrictions of the disciplines, their differing modes of performance and exhibition and their separate critical languages. Accessing them comparatively in the environment they are built and located within further pushing the notion of hearing the continuum of sound. Finally, the final chapter focuses on listening to the inaudible, specifically focusing on the possible impossible, sounds we cannot or do not want to hear. This book is written from the position of Voegelin’s reality of a presumed actual world.

This book is quite abstract and hard to digest but the inferences she makes about perceiving soundscapes will be useful in backing up the points of my essay. This also shares a similar framework to that in Sonic Virtuality albeit with different vocabulary, apparatus and area of relation.