Sound Film: Study of River Thurne was commissioned by Oxford Brookes’ Sonic and Experimental Research Department, with the resulting work published in Row of Trees journal and exhibited in May 2024.

The starting point was a geographical curiosity: a sound, in geographical terms, is a body of water connected to a sea or ocean. There are only two geographical sounds in the UK, and Heigham Sound – connected to the River Thurne via Candle Dyke – is the only one linked to a river. The prospect of making an audio sound film about a geographical sound drew Brehony to Norfolk in March 2024, where she camped a short walk from the Thurne and spent a week moving along the river with no plan beyond daily life with the water and its surroundings.

Within the first ten minutes of arriving she met Ian and Joan, who spoke about life beside the river – anticipation of flooding, fears for homes and livelihoods. Their voices open the film and return midway. A spider web on a boathouse gate led to a cup of tea and a local history book, which led in turn to Neil, whose family had lived beside the Thurne for more than seventy years. A seanchaí appeared, and the geographical sound revealed its own stories.

Any plan to poetically engage with a geographic concept gave way almost immediately to something more reciprocal – a rambling, attentive process of listening and responding to what the river and its people chose to offer. The resulting ten-minute film is a meditation on daily life beside water: patterns of light on leaves and bark, conversations with long-term residents, the sounds of a river ecosystem that eventually finds its way out to sea.

Read and watch here.