An Inquest concerning teeth: sound and cockles
Last month we convened at Waterloo to embark on a guided coastal walk to Crosby Beach led by the wonderful Sara Wolff. Sara is a composer, songwriter and sound artist who works with media composition, field recordings and live performance. Originally from Norway but now based in Liverpool, she uses field recordings, tape loops, analogue synths and voice to explore nature, people and their interconnection. In 2025 she started her own soundwalk collective, ‘Sound Pals’, a monthly guided listening walk with the goal to explore and connect with the local spaces of Liverpool through listening in a present, curious way.
Sara supplied microphones and headphones that where passed around. Participants held the microphones to the birds, the underside on an umbrella being hit with drops of rain, towards the water, and to each other.
Sketchbooks and pencils in hand we walked slowly and silently, listening with intent to things near and far. Sara created a map with multiple stops where we stood in silent contemplation and gave our time and our ears to the landscape.
We heard the low and continuous hum of industrial machinery, dads teaching their children about crabbing, the rain, Western House Martins, children yelling, shells crunching beneath our soles, participants whispers, young people chatting, Starlings, and Creedence Clearwater playing from a speaker we couldn’t see.
We ended the walk with a discussion. Stood surrounded by Gormley’s cast iron figures participants shared what they heard, what sounds they enjoyed, what sounds surprised them, and what sounds they’d previously taken for granted.
Before parting ways, participants and facilitators gathered together on short stools and shared a coastal-inspired lunch of samphire salad served with cockles dowsed in chilli oil and lime zest.
Purveyors in peasant food, artist duo Heavy Digestations create food for the AICT series that is is or once was considered working class. Samphire looks and tastes of seaweed and the sea and was once referred to as the poor mans asparagus. Samphire is now a relatively expensive ingredient and in using it they highlight the fickleness of food trends. The cockles were gathered in Southport and generously donated to us by Wards Fish, a local fishmongers that was established in 1927 by Emily Ward, the wife of a ship’s cook from Birkenhead, Ward’s Fish is a family business currently owned and run by the fourth generation Simon and Nigel Buckmaster.
On the 13th September, there will be an opportunity to catch up with participants and facilitators of this workshop at The Royal Standard where we will be showing work from each of the workshops in the series. We hope to see you there.
