The Oresteia system is a long-durational performance rooted in The Oresteia, Aeschylus’s three-part tragedy written in 458 B.C. By utilizing a locally hosted multi-agent jury composed of eight large language models—each enriched by a different translation of the original play—the performance imagines the legal deliberation, originally left off-stage, during the final act when trial by jury first appears. This LLM-based jury system deliberates within the conceptual framework of the transition from divine, retributive justice to an emerging, fallible human legal process. The eight LLMs, each fed a different translation of the play, interpret the work and formulate their opinions on the trial's outcome. Grounded in research on multi-agent LLM systems applied to legal evaluation as well as performance theory, the Oresteia system seeks to uncover and interrogate the notions of imitation, discourse, and dissent at the intersection of these two fields of research.

‍

The Oresteia System is a long-durational performance within the three-part tragedy The Oresteia, by Aeschylus, written in 458 B.C. Using a locally hosted multi-agent jury composed of eight Large Language Models—each augmented by a different translation of the original play—the performance imagines the originally unwritten juridical deliberation in the final act, at the moment when the first trial by jury is introduced.The LLM jury system deliberates within the conceptual framework of the transition from retributive, divine justice to a newly emerging human, fallible juridical process. The 8 LLMs, each provided with a different translation of the play,  interpret the play and contribute their opinions on what the outcome of the trial should be. Grounded in research on multi-agent LLM juridical evaluation systems and performance theory, the Oresteia System seeks to excavate and reflect upon imitation, discourse, and dissent across these two research fields.