We Are One is a composed sonic work combining recordings made above and below water with voice to explore relations between bodies, rivers, and sound. Developed at the point where the buried River Westbourne meets the Thames in London, the piece treats the recording site as a temporal and spatial marker, situating listening within the layered histories of an urban river that was dammed, polluted, and eventually diverted into a sewer.¹²

Using hydrophones and microphones to capture simultaneous sonic registers, the project investigates how differences between submerged and surface sound can be layered rather than separated. Influenced by Dilip da Cunha’s critique of fixed river boundaries, the work approaches water not as an external object but as something humans materially embody.³ The vocal component introduces tonal traces of human intervention, suggesting entanglement rather than division.

The composition is accompanied by a graphic notation derived from the audio, translating sonic qualities into systems of marks, lines, and shapes. Drawing on experimental score practices discussed in Sound Art: Sound as a Medium of Art, the notation acts as a visual counterpart to the recording, extending listening into a spatial and perceptual form.⁴ Together, sound and score propose an alternative representation of water that resists narratives of separation and instead foregrounds continuity between human and hydrological systems.