The Spark
A collaboration with fashion-law professor Carlos: take a live question in AI intellectual-property law and, rather than assign the reading, put it on trial — a judgment staged as theater, performed for the classroom by machine actors.
The Craft
Three automata were cast as the poles of the argument inside Phalanestère, the FRS avatar-theater instrument — each authored as a six-axis personality vector with a drive, a worldview, and a tension. Judge Morrison, the bench: assertiveness 0.85, empathy 0.30, driven to uphold procedural rigor, afraid of setting dangerous precedent. Dr. Vasquez, the science: curiosity 0.90, openness 0.85, convinced emergence transcends human categorization, uneasy with legal framings of creative computation. Alex Chen, the studio: a working artist who insists art requires human intentionality — while using AI tools. Hume's expressive voice AI gave each a distinct emotional register, and Descript carried the edit: a full AI production chain from legal script to staged performance.
Outcome
The judgment played as a recorded lecture-performance — a classroom watching machine actors argue the law that will govern machines, with the argument's stakes embodied rather than assigned.