Hooi by Tim Shaw and John Coburn

We live in a visually dominated world. The natural and social identities of our landscapes are not often heard. We assume these sounds will always be there. And every day, the sounds that tell the story of our world change and disappear.

We tend not to document our everyday lives through sound. Most of us do not navigate the high street with our ears. The shifting sound worlds beneath our feet and above our houses are rarely perceived or considered.

Hooi is a presentation of the many sounds across the Hamble Peninsula. Blending recorded interviews and field recordings, this artwork weaves between the historical and the incidental, the constant and the changing. From the ferry boat captain who worked the Hamble River for 67 years to the clacking of oyster beds beneath his boat.

Hooi reveals the layered social and environmental experience of this Peninsula across time. It revisits the unremarkable objects- the chapel organ, boat masts, and the bell-ringing that have created sound worlds shared by 500 years of communities living across Hamble, Bursledon and Hound. Voices include those of residents who have lived and worked here their entire lives, and others who found their way to the Peninsula often through their relationship with water.

Non-human voices are also presented, the birds in a spring dawn chorus, the sub-aquatic life beneath the surface of the river, the clicking and popping of the mud flats after the tide retreats.

All recordings were collected across Winter, Spring and Summer 2024.