Phoebe Walton

James v Birnmann, a never ending legal drama, is situated in a future where law is controlled and maintained by AI. It acts as a sinister mixture of entertainment and social pacifier, for a legal system increasingly detached from human control. As purely symbolic vestiture, the performance is untied from the functioning of the legal system. Following in a common law tradition, the ur legal trial is based on precedent of past ‘real’ trials and ‘fictional’ legal dramas - it is an amalgamation of our perception of law. 

The never ending performance is a ground hog day style re-running - with small changes and iterations happening continuously. The infrastructure needed to support the show is immense. It requires a whole world - of backlot, stage set, and supporting spaces - where the boundary between what is and is not performance space is blurred. Where actors, crew, cleaners, visitors, are absorbed in this continual performance of law.

The overtly symbolic architecture participates in the charade. It is a site of spectatorship, for viewing the collage of legal iconography - security gates, flags, legalese, legal drama tropes - a synthesis of pop culture and authoritarianism. The vast scale and the surreal implications of its relentless re-running suggest the lengths we will go to, to sustain the performance of law and protect the authority of the legal system. 

Whilst the public can visit the never ending performance of James v Birnmann, most only access it through television, on a twenty four hour channel of its own. However, this performance is mediated by animation - the spaces, its actors and the drama are transferred into the animated landscape, which makes explicit the representational, symbolic nature of the performance. 

This follows in the tradition of western courts, where the public may access a trial through being a physical audience member and via the courtroom sketch. Live action representation is avoided for its misplaced sense of objectivism and consequential biased understanding of the legal system. Through training the AI StyleGan2 on hundreds of courtroom sketches, it produces its own versions - a familiar iconography of the vague, fictional representations of the courtroom. 

The AI GPT-2, trained on legal transcripts and prompted by legal dramas, wrote the ur legal drama - 1 James v Birnmann. The script is a synthesis of legal cases; akin to legalese, its meaning is indiscernible to most, yet it holds a familiar authority.

The script is combined with recognisable tropes from legal dramas, creating a performance that is a hyperbolic symbol of law. Throughout legal dramas, corridors are important places for lawyers to hold urgent conversations whilst walking - their inability to stand still demonstrating the fast paced nature of law. A warehouse of corridors enables the endless walking and talking shots.

Rooms have windows that frame a city - signifying the laws status and relationship with wider society. To facilitate this, windows surround a scaled model of New York, that reconfigures and condenses the city.

There is a long tradition of promoting the law through courtroom procedure and performance, using language, costumes, props, choreography and architectural stage sets. From Azande Benge ceremonies, which entrust the poison oracle and chick, to the Medieval Icelandic Althing ceremony, held on the ‘Law Rock’, to the familiar scenography of modern western courtrooms. Whilst these sets vary, expressing their respective legal systems and cultural customs, each utilises a similar framework of performance. 

The increasing use of AI within western legal systems is seen in the growing industry of Law Tech in the US, with state courts devolving decisions such as sentencing and bail to these private technology companies. Within this algorithmic legal decision making, biases - usually along racial and socioeconomic lines - propagate unchecked.

Considering a future where the legal system is maintained by AI - the performance of law in courtroom trials will no longer be necessary. Whilst detached from the functioning of the legal system, this form of symbolic representation will have to remain, to foster trust and validation with the system. 

Courthouses will be replaced by data centres. With a public presence and claims to transparency, these new legal typologies will demonstrate the huge quantities of precedent data and processing power used to maintain the legal system.

Symbolism will be amplified - architectural forms will be used to reinforce the authority of the AI legal system, with AI, in this case StyleGan2, producing its own versions - trained on precedent data. 

James v Birnmann, the ur legal trial, is based on the history of legal precedent, following in a common law tradition, as well as tropes from legal dramas. Mirroring the AI legal system, precedent data from both these real and fictional cases are harvested.

For designing this drama, notable cases are studied. The OJ - Simpson trial is significant for its relationship to the media and popular perception of law. Key moments of the trial have been restaged, from the hundreds of hours of television footage. Such as the shot of OJ as he tries the gloves on, facing the jury in the courtroom, and the public jury at home - who witness the crucial moment of the gloves not fitting. The camera angles and choreography are extracted for these key sequences. 

Cases that go to court, rather than being settled outside of the courtroom, are predominately contentious and quite surreal - as such, James v Birnmann is too. In the 1932 English Case of Donoghue v Stevenson, May Donoghue fell ill after drinking a bottle of ginger beer with a decomposing snail in it. The supreme court ruling lay the foundation for the modern law on tort.