Entropy Bound is a full-length comedy by REMAP’s Jeff Burke and Jared J. Stein currently in development, intending to fuse traditional dramaturgy and code. The script incorporates machine-learning systems running position tracking, object identification, and programmed reactions to generate encoded human memory. It is being written to incorporate production-specific choices by producing companies, and to allow these choices to serve as subjects of media that develop over the course of the rehearsal process and run—further directing the actors’ choices with each performance, thus further developing the dramaturgy.
It follows a woman who has lost her ability to form new memories, and to access her old ones, in a tragic but mysterious accident. She is the recipient of a brain implant which attempts to mimic a human memory by analyzing the view through her eyes, labeling what she's seeing, recording her sentiment regarding it, and subsequently attempting to match it to anything she has seen before. This production used a POV camera with realtime person and object recognition streaming both to show displays and a recording/analysis database to approximate the brain implant, though the script is written to allow for the genuine article, should the technology and consenting actors become available.
The project is the third of three Google-supported Future Storytelling research projects to take place at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television—the first being Los Atlantis, and the second, Search for Global Song. REMAP is currently working with the Plovdiv Drama Theatre in Bulgaria on a 2019 professional premiere of the piece during Plovdiv’s term as European Capital of Culture, extending the organizations’ relationship that began at the Rhodope International Theatre Laboratory.
