The Labyrinth software project reflects my growing interest in structuring and designing improvisations. In my first such work, Maxwell's Demon, a conductor establishes the durations within which the members of a quintet improvise freely. In Labyrinth, the design is social, rather than temporal. The operator of the Labyrinth software structures - and sometimes short-circuits - the communications among an ensemble of improvisers, guiding the performance of the group without controlling it.

Labyrinth was developed as an application for Chris Chafe's systems for the near-real-time transmission of digital audio over high-speed networks. The performers are arrayed in a variety of different physical locations (from isolated rooms in a single building, to different continents), and listen to one another as they play into the network via microphones. The Labyrinth operator is at the conceptual center of the network, processing and distorting the various performances, and controlling whose performances are heard at each location. This hub-and-spokes arrangement makes unusual ensemble relationships possible. For instance, the operator might establish a game of "telephone," where the first performer is listening to a second, the second hears only a third, and the third musician is responding to the first, with each of the performers defining "listening" and "responding" in their own way. Because each location has its own unique mix, there is no single "global performance," but rather a variety of related musical events.

The Labyrinth software is designed in response to a provocation from David Tudor, who wrote: "I want to find ways of discovering something you don't know at the time that you improvise.... [One way] is to play an instrument over which you have no control, or less control than usual." Just as the musicians relinquish some control over ensemble relationships, the operator steers the Labyrinth software without commanding it; a variety of random and algorithmic processes make moment-to-moment decisions about the processing and mixing. The system and its operator become responsible and equal partners in the improvisation.

Premiered September 7, 2003, at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, with Mark Applebaum, sound sculptures; Christopher Burns, Labyrinth software; Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, PadMaster electronics; Roberto Morales, flutes, harp; Rocco Di Pietro, accordion.

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