In September 2025, Fiona Brehony curated a Calming Sound Room at the OOC DTP AHRC International Conference, held at the University of Oxford. Running across three days under the conference theme of Borders and Boundaries, the room was conceived as a dedicated space for peace, care, and gentle reflection – an immersive counterpoint to the keynotes and panels, and a demonstration of how sound-based research can inhabit and expand the boundaries of academic exchange.

The room featured three distinct sound works: Fishing For Life by George Revill and Liza Griffin, exploring the pressures facing inshore fishing communities on the Norfolk Coast; Electronic Breeze and Shoreham Phantoms by Simon James, compositions drawn from industrial coastal landscapes; and River Irk: Two Worlds, a collaboration between Brehony and composer Simon Knighton.

Two Worlds emerged from a durational listening practice on the banks of the River Irk in North Manchester. Rising before dawn on 13th August 2025, Brehony and Knighton recorded nocturnal sounds and birdsong along a stretch of river running through one of England’s most economically marginalised areas, now at the centre of a major regeneration project. The resulting piece contrasts two sound worlds – the natural sounds of water, birds, and wind against the industrial hum of cars and machinery – using a generative compositional process in which the computer selects and sequences audio snippets based on probabilities decided by the artists, creating an endlessly evolving sound collage that mirrors the patterns and textures of the river itself. Community voices gathered by Brehony over the preceding year weave in and out throughout.

Brehony also co-facilitated a listening workshop with Simon James and Simon Knighton, inspired by the practice of composer Pauline Oliveros. Drawing on field recordings from the River Irk and other natural environments, the session invited participants into deep, focused listening as a way of attuning to place, presence, and one another.