Mick Ebeling: The invention that unlocked a locked-in artist

79,835 views ・ 2011-04-07

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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I have had the distinct blessing in my life
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to have worked on a bunch of amazing projects.
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But the coolest I ever worked on
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was around this guy.
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This guy's name is TEMPT.
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TEMPT was one of the foremost graffiti artists in the 80s.
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And he came up home from a run one day
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and said, "Dad, my legs are tingling."
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And that was the onset of ALS.
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So TEMPT is now completely paralyzed.
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He only has use of his eyes.
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I was exposed to him.
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I have a company that does design and animation,
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so obviously graffiti is definitely an intricate part
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of what we admire and respect in the art world.
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And so we decided that we were going to sponsor
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Tony, TEMPT, and his cause.
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So I went and met with his brother and father
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and said, "We're going to give you this money.
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What are you going to do with it?"
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And his brother said, "I just want to be able to talk to Tony again.
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I just want to be able to communicate with him
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and him to be able to communicate with me."
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And I said, "Wait a second, isn't that -- I've seen Stephen Hawking --
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don't all paralyzed people have the ability to communicate
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via these devices?"
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And he said, "No, unless you're in the upper echelon and
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you've got really amazing insurance,
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you can't actually do that.
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These devices aren't accessible to people."
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And I said, "Well, how do you actually communicate?"
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Has everyone seen the movie "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly?"
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That's how they communicate --
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so run their finger along.
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I said, "That's archaic. How can that be?"
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So I showed up with the desire to just write a check,
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and instead, I wrote a check
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that I had no freaking idea how I was going to cash.
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I committed to his brother and his father right then and there --
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I'm like, "All right, here's the deal:
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Tony's going to speak, we're going to get him a machine,
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and we're going to figure out a way for him to do his art again.
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Because it's a travesty that someone who still has all of that in him
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isn't able to communicate it."
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So I spoke at a conference a couple months after that.
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I met these guys called GRL,
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Graffiti Research Lab,
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and they have a technology
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that allows them to project a light onto any surface
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and then, with a laser pointer, draw on it,
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and it just registers the negative space.
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So they go around and do art installations like this.
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All the things that go up there, they said there's a life cycle.
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First it starts with the sexual organs,
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then it starts with cuss words,
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then it was Bush slanders
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and then people actually got to art.
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But there was always a life cycle to their presentations.
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So I went home and was having dinner with my wife
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and was telling her about this,
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and we were like, "Well wait a second. If we know that this technology exists
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where you can use your eyes to control things,
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why don't we figure out a way for TEMPT to control a laser
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and he could do graf again? Well that would be awesome."
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So that started the journey.
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And about two years later, about a year later,
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after a bunch of organization
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and a bunch of moving things around,
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we'd accomplished a couple things.
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One, we battered down the doors of the insurance companies,
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and we actually got TEMPT a machine
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that let him communicate -- a Stephen Hawking machine.
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(Applause)
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Which was awesome.
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And he's seriously one of the funniest -- I call him Yoda,
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because you talk to the guy, you get an email from him,
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and you're like, "I'm not worthy. This guy's so amazing."
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The other thing we did
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is we flew seven programmers from all over the world --
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literally every corner of the world --
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into our house.
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My wife and kids and I moved to our back garage,
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and these hackers and programmers
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and conspiracy theorists and anarchists took over our house.
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A lot of our friends thought we were absolutely stupid to do that
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and that we were going to come back
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and all the pictures on the wall would be removed and graf on the walls.
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But for over two weeks,
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we programmed,
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we went to the Venice boardwalk,
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my kids got involved,
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my dog got involved,
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and we created this.
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This is called the EyeWriter,
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and you can see the description.
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This is a cheap pair of sunglasses
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that we bought at the Venice Beach boardwalk,
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some copper wire
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and some stuff from Home Depot and Radio Shack.
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We took a PS3 camera, hacked it open,
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mounted it to an LED light,
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and now there's a device that is free --
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you build this yourself, we publish the code for free,
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you download the software for free.
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And now we've created a device
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that has absolutely no limitations.
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There's no insurance company that can say "No."
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There's no hospital that can say "No."
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Anybody who's paralyzed now has access
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to actually draw or communicate using only their eyes.
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(Applause)
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Thank you.
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Thank you guys very much. That was awesome.
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So at the end of the two weeks,
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we went back to TEMPT's room.
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I love this picture, because this is someone else's room
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and that's his room.
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So there's all this hustle and bustle going on for the big unveiling.
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And after over a year of planning,
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two weeks of programming,
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carb-fest and all-night sessions,
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Tony drew again for the first time in seven years.
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And this is an amazing picture,
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because this is his life support system,
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and he's looking over his life support system.
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We kicked his bed so that he could see out.
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And we set up a projector
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on a wall out in the parking lot outside of his hospital.
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And he drew again for the first time,
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in front of his family and friends --
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and you can only imagine
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what the feeling in the parking lot was.
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The funny thing was, we had to break into the parking lot too,
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so we totally felt like we were legit in the whole graf scene too.
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(Laughter)
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So at the end of this, he sent us an email,
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and this is what the email said:
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"That was the first time I've drawn anything for seven years.
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I feel like I had been held underwater,
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and someone finally reached down
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and pulled my head up so I could breathe."
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Isn't that awesome?
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(Applause)
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So that's kind of our battle cry.
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That's what keeps us going and keeps us developing.
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And we've got such a long way to go with this.
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This is an amazing device,
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but it's the equivalent of an Etch A Sketch.
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And someone who has that kind of artistic potential deserves so much more.
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So we're in the process of trying to figure out
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how to make it better, faster, stronger.
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Since that time, we've had all kinds of acknowledgment.
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We've won a bunch of awards.
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Remember, it's free; none of us are making any money on this thing.
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It's all coming out of our own pockets.
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So the awards were like, "Oh, this is fantastic."
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Armstrong Twittered about us,
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and then in December, Time magazine honored us
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as one of the top 50 inventions of 2010, which was really cool.
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(Applause)
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The coolest thing about this --
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and this is what's completing the whole circle --
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is that in April of this year,
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at the Geffen MOCA in downtown Los Angeles,
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there's going to be an exhibition called "Art of the Streets."
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And "Art of the Streets" is going to have
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pretty much the bad-asses of the street art scene --
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Banksy, Shepard Fairey, KAWS --
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all of these guys will be there.
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TEMPT's going to be in the show,
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which is pretty awesome.
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(Applause)
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So basically this is my point:
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If you see something that's not possible,
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make it possible.
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Everything in this room wasn't possible --
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this stage, this computer, this mic, the EyeWriter --
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wasn't possible at one point.
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Make it possible, everyone in this room.
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I'm not a programmer,
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never done anything with ocular recognition technology,
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but I just recognized something and associated myself with amazing people
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so that we could make something happen.
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And this is the question I want everyone to ask yourself
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every single day
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when you come up with something you feel that needs to be done:
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if not now, then when? And if not me, then who?
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Thank you guys.
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07:39
(Applause)
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