The foundation of the Interlocks is the principle of superimposition: several processes act together in the creation of a result, but once the outcome is there, the individual stages can no longer be separated. The production of the human voice is a familiar example: a stream of air sets a pulse wave in motion, whose frequency is then modulated. Resonances shape the colour of the sound, while filters and articulations refine it further. Yet we can never hear these layers in isolation – the voice only ever appears as a whole.

Unlike a traditional acoustic ensemble, where the “division of labour” results in distinct parts sounding together, the Interlocks place all performers within one multi-layered, interdependent system.
It may be compared to the collective writing of a text: one person drafts half a sentence, another changes a few words, a third completes the thought, and a fourth polishes the phrasing. Thanks to digital tools such as Google Docs, this way of working has long been common. At its best, it is a model of collective authorship: the final sentences cannot be attributed to a single individual but emerge from a generative process shared by all.

What, then, becomes of a quartet when the musicians neither “converse like reasonable people,” as Goethe once described, nor merely combine individual notes into polyphonic structures, but instead control the entire result together and at the same time? The outcome is no longer polyphony but a permanently monodic texture – like a bottom-up process in society, where many voices contribute to a single position.

Yet this monody mirrors the complexity of interaction in new ways. The Interlocks can be understood as an experimental arrangement: the translation of a conceptual model of collective organisms and societies into music, and a radical attempt at truly collective work "on sound".