A House of Mirrors III is the third of a series of pieces that take the notion of a continuous musical flow as their starting point, and in which the context of the composition is always both audible and tangible. Its further course remains, however, unforeseeable.The most important aid when realising this idea is a so-called ‘distorted mirror’ technique which was initially tested manually but was ultimately refined and generalised with the help of a computer. Starting from a single rhythmic and intervallic cell, a chain of microvariations is formed by a series of mirrors which are linked by slight deviations of interval, duration, playing style and dynamics. The further course of the piece depends on the mirroring depth (how much of the previously played material is mirrored), the degree of deviation (the extent to which this material is modified) and the number of instruments which are mirrored together (how compact or individualised the instruments are).

In contrast to many earlier pieces, A House of Mirrors III was not developed based on a pre-defined overall structure. In the composition process, the computer played the role of both a navigation instrument and a log book, marking the way to an unforeseeable realm. The decision to dispense with the computer in the second half of the piece was also unforeseeable: it reflects back from the middle to the beginning, thereby providing a complete, if distorted, reflection of the first part of the piece.