A musician, friend of mine, lost a music performance contest. He was angry — not at losing, but at the machine that had produced the result: the jury, the institution, the closed circuit of legitimization. He could name the problem precisely, but he couldn't figure out what to do about it. I told him: let's confront the machine with humor. Let random processes build a structure that laughs at structures.

My-space-Music Open Call. Almost 120 entries. Sixteen preselected musicians were paired at random, on the spot, by roulette. Eight duos. Twelve minutes each. The audience — not a jury, not a panel of specialists — voted for the best interaction. One edition. One statement.

The design is the score. The roulette is the instrument (as in Six Lost Songs). The sixteen musicians are the orchestra — assembled in eight duos for one night by chance, never rehearsed, never introduced to each other. The duration is fixed. The content is entirely indeterminate. What happens inside the frame cannot be predicted or controlled — only set in motion. This is orchestration: not writing what sounds, but building the conditions under which sound becomes inevitable.

The festival generated fierce opposition within Berlin's improvised music scene. The established names never applied — their absence was a position. The echtzeitmusik calendar refused to list it. Nearly 220+ people showed up anyway. Sold out. Many couldn't get in. To this day the most attended experimental improvised music concert in Berlin — achieved without the support of the one institution that existed to make such things visible.

Diego Chamy, writing his critical defense of the festival, found the precise description perhaps without knowing it: "The Interaktion Festival walked a fine line where everything could have been something else, and it was never clear to anyone what was happening exactly or how it would all end."

By describing the festival, he was describing The Threshold.