Different Islands by Edmund Hunt, for dancer, string quartet and live electronics, began as a project to investigate creative approaches to an Old English text known as ‘Wulf and Eadwacer’. By embedding the untranslated text within disparate elements of musical composition, dance and live electronics, the project seeks to explore the text through its thematic content, sound, and structure.

In choosing not to present the text in its translated form, the project intends to focus on the ambiguous, layered and fragmentary nature of the poem. Rather than presenting a definitive translation, the creative re-presentation of the poem allows it to remain open to different interpretations.

In developing this project, the analogy of the text as a fossil provided a useful starting point. Electroacoustic technology, in the form of analyses and live electronics, provides the medium into which the textual ‘fossil’ leaves its imprint.

The development of the composition and the electronics, realised using the Integra Live software, are documented in a paper for the International Computer Music Conference in 2020 by Edmund Hunt and James Dooley (The Open University): ‘A Core and Yet Absent’: Using Electroacoustic Technology to Mediate between String Quartet and an Ancient Text.