Month: Saturday July 4th, 2015

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Guest: Michael Joaquin Grey

Date: 2015-04-02  19：00 ~ 2015-04-02  20：00

Address: Chronus Art Center (Bldg 18, No.50 Moganshan Rd., Shanghai)

Artist Talk- Michael Joaquin Grey
Accumulations: Creating Collections and Cosmologies
LANGUAGE: English (with Chinese translation)
TIME:2015.4.2, 7-8pm
LOCATION: Chronus Art Center (Bldg18, NO.50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)

About the Talk
Michael Joaquin Grey’s works capture the critical moments in nature and culture. With a focus on information, space (micro and macro) and the body, his artistic practice is constantly reminding us the limits of humanity, both perceptually and culturally; he emphasizes the importance of primary observation to help understand our development from the bottom up.  He shares the objects of media history as prosthetics to create an extension of our awareness.
This talk will serve as a portal into a world of interrelated cosmologies in which Michael will share with us his post-museum collection of the history of media located in a generative animation of the cosmos.

About the Artist
For the past thirty years, Michael Joaquin Grey (b. 1961, Los Angeles, California, lives in San Francisco and New York City) has been investigating the development of life, language and form in complex and natural systems; and how animate and inanimate systems originate, grow and decay. Grey’s work has been exhibited and collected internationally including: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Serpentine Gallery, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Walker Art Center; Kunstverein Hannover; DOX Center for Contemporary Art, Prague; Sundance Film Festival; Berkeley Art Museum, California; National Art Museum of China, Beijing; the New Art Trust: TATE Modern, and the San Francisco Modern.

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Guest: Shen Xin, Zhang Ga

Date: 2015-03-29  14:00 ~ 2015-03-29  15:30

Address: Chronus Art Center (Bldg 18, No.50 Moganshan Rd., Shanghai)

Language: Chinese(with English subtitles)

This event is free of charge. Reservation via membership@chronusartcenter.org(please send your full name, contact information, and the number of places to reserve).

About The Event:

As the recipient of CAC fellowship for Chinese artist 2015, Shen Xin will be giving a talk on her research and proposed project, and will take part in a conversation with Zhang Ga on the coming residency that is to commence at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design and Centre for Chinese Visual Arts.

Shen’s proposal and research focus on her interests in immaterial labour in relation to animation and the productivity of digitalization in set ups like symposiums, conferences, which she would organize and invite practitioners in the field of theory, art, politics, etc. to partake. This talk will serve as an introduction both in its form and content, to various points of interests of Shen’s project “Flattened Metaphysics (working title)”, laying out aspects of the forthcoming working process and conceptual concerns. She will focus on the position of public intellectuals, and will attempt to draw out her blueprints in the structures situated within the gaps of speech and action, thinking and battling, critiquing and receiving, concerning meta-political environments.

She will also give an introduction to her practice in relation to this residency, which is foregrounded by moving image, and also encompasses virtual realities and figures, public proposal, communication interfaces, self-publication, and tourist attraction.

About the Speakers:

Shen Xin (1990, CN) lives and works in UK and China. Having completed her MFA in Slade School of Fine Arts in 2014, Shen was selected for the touring exhibitions of Bloomberg New Contemporaries at World Museum in Liverpool, ICA in London, and Newlyn Art Gallery in Cornwall. Shen has curated the Artists’ Film Club program Unorthodox Hosts at ICA, London in 2014, as well as been selected as MAstar for Axis Web by Kirsty Ogg. Selected group shows include 18th Japanese Media Art Festival, Tokyo; Does Not Equal at W139, Amsterdam, Bloomberg New Contemporaries at World Museum, Liverpool Biennial, and at ICA, London; 21st Century Screening at Chisenhale Gallery, London; Chinese Visual Festival at King’s College, London.

ZHANG Ga is a media art curator, professor at the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University and Artistic Director/Curator of International Triennial of New Media Art 2008, 2011, 2014 (National Art Musuem of China); He is also on the editorial board of The Leonardo Books (MIT Press).

About CAC Fellowship for Chinese Artist:

This Fellowship has been created by the School of Art, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD), Birmingham City University in conjunction with the Chronus Art Center (CAC) in Shanghai. The Fellowship offers an exciting opportunity for an artist at the commencement of or at a critical point in their professional career, to further develop his or her practice particularly in relation to Chinese art and culture. The Fellowship will be based in the School of Art. The successful applicant will be expected to become a full and active member of the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) and research community within the School.

This Fellowship is designed particularly for Chinese national students and graduates based either in China or in the UK. The successful applicant is to hold a postgraduate degree in Fine Art or a related subject and able to communicate in fluent English orally as well as in writing. The duration is normally, for 6 calendar months commencing in April 2015 .The Fellowship will normally conclude with an exhibition of work produced during the Fellowship as a CAC Fellowship section within the BIAD MA Fine Art show.

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Guest: Hu Jieming

Date: 2014-12-20  16:00 ~ 2014-12-20  18:00

Address: Chronus Art Center (Rm101, Bldg 18, No.50 Moganshan Rd., Shanghai)
This event is free of charge. Reservation via membership@chronusartcenter.org(please send your full name, contact information, and the number of places to reserve).

About Exhibition：

Over his entire artistic career, Hu Jieming’s work has dealt with the image – it’s possibility of holding meaning, its life within its media environment, and its extended ideological treatment. The meaning of an image within the world can be a direct commentary on the contemporary situation, as well as a reflection on the way that the contemporary situation itself has developed through the portrayal of historical or fictional events. In Chronus Arts Centre over the past half year, Hu has presented two large-scale installations, Overture and Tai Chi, which develop these ideas, and in themselves link together as a series of investigations into the nature and reception of images.

China’s recent history has provided Hu with a wealth of imagery (both ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’) from which to draw the movie clips that made up the ‘raw material’ of the first installation,Overture, which opened in May 2014. The myriad filmed sequences, ripped from the continuum of world- and cinematic-history were presented through perforations in the rough brick walls of the exhibition space, forcing the audience to peer through this facade to see the filmed sequences beyond. Overture was superseded in September 2014 by the installation Tai Chi, the skeletal framework of which was controlled by motors that allowed it to slowly walk around the space. InTai Chi  the films left their refuge behind the bricks and became embedded into the boned structure of the machine, projecting their visions out onto its body and onto the surfaces of the room around it. Where Overture was reticent in its presentation of filmed imagery, Tai Chi explodes with enthusiasm – however this enthusiasm may be tainted by the traumatic nature of the bodies and the history that the images bear.

Now, accompany Tai Chi , this archiving presentation creates a moment to review its life – the initial inspiration for the piece, developed by Hu Jieming in his studio many months ago, through it’s development in discussion with engineering companies and fabricators, the many hardware and software tests that had to be undertaken, the shipping of all the individual elements from Switzerland to Shanghai, to the final installation in the Chronus Art Centre in M50. This archive presents the remnants of all these activities, laying out the life and structure of Tai Chi  for our analysis.

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格式工厂17

Guest: Tobias Gremmler

Date: 2014-12-08  14:00 ~ 2014-12-08  17:00

Address: Chronus Art Center (101, Bldg18, 50 Moganshan Rd. Shanghai)

14:00 - 15:30  Final Presentation
15:30 - 17:00  Launch Ceremony

Media Scenography

A workshop on immersive 360° media environments

Tobias Gremmler introduces principles of creating media for immersive environments and let the workshop participants explore the creative potential of immersive media installations. The relationship between a user and an immersive environment is comparable to a person observing their natural environment. The primary cognitive and perceptual process is equal to exploring visual information as if it were in real space. The spatial perception of visual information in virtual space invokes a cognitive model that benefits from natural orientation and observation behaviours. However, the content of an immersive environment is not restricted to mimicking real environments. The dynamic non-linear qualities of digital media offer a broader range of possible scenarios. Distribution and ordering principles of content in virtual space are no longer restricted to the physical limitations of real space. Geometry, perspective and motion shifting towards an abstract space, its architecture and dynamic evokes out of imagination. Creating media scenography means becoming an architect, director, choreographer, light designer all at the same time, by creating and manipulating virtual scenarios.

The workshop in 4 modules:
- Sound and Space: Sound visualisation, graphical music sequencers
- Immersive World: 3D scans and photos in 360°
- Aesthetics of Motion: Human motion visualisation

- Interaction: Interaction design for media spaces

During each module, participants are to create individual studies/artworks. Each day after regular lectures and tutorials, participants can optimize their studies/artworks.
During the last two days of the workshop, students develop new concepts and implement complex artwork, based on what they have learned in the modules before.
A selection of the best works from the first modules studies and the artworks created during the last two days will be shown in the exhibition.

Tobias Gremmler (Bio):
Tobias Gremmler is Visiting Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong and Visiting Professor at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. He started his career as media artist and designer in the early 90s. His work has been shown at Ars Electronica, Transmediale, and theatres like Volksbühne Berlin and Cultural Centre Hong Kong. He blends media art and design with traditional art forms like theatre, music and sculpture. As Designer, he developed digital design solutions for companies such as Apple, Adidas, BMW, Samsung, Swarovski and Sony. Book publications: 'Grids for the Dynamic Image' 2003, 'cyberBionic' 2008, 'Creative Education and Dynamic Media' 2014.
Homepage: www.syncon-d.com

Teaching and Research: www.syncon-d.com/hk

Special Thanks to:
Jeffrey Shaw, Hu Jieming, Christoph Bode, Yan Zhai,  Mario Sun, Zhang Yifan

Reservations via membership@chronusartcenter.org (please supply your full name, contact information, and the number of people attending)

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格式工厂16

Guest: Lu Xinghua

Date: 2014-11-16  14:00 ~ 2014-11-16  16:00

Address: Chronus Art Center (101, Bldg 18, 50 Moganshan Rd. Shanghai)

LANGUAGE: Chinese

Reservations viamembership@chronusartcenter.org (please supply your full name, contact information, and the number of people attending)

ABOUT THE LECTURE:

This lecture will start with the new relationship between technology - policy and art. The phamarkon of new media, distraction and open source will be discussed to summarize this series activities. Our lecture will base on focus and distraction, consumption and contribution, dispersion and converging, aesthetic and sharing, production and open source — these five aspects to recap discussions about new media art presented in these four lectures.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Lu Xinghua teaches at School of Humanities of Tongji University and at the Center of Social Thought and Contemporary Art, China Academy of Art. His research interests go across modern Chinese politics, aesthetics and Chinese contemporary art since 1985. He was member of acting committee for 2010 Shanghai Biennale. His recent works include Against Claims from Contemporary Art (2012) and The Future of Political Art (2014).

ABOUT THE LECTURES SERIES: 
On the Borders of New Media Art: Creation, Spectatorship, Presentation, and Collection

New media art is generating a new sociality and reaching beyond our contemporary understandings of artistic theory and basic approaches, indicating ways to interpose into reality and history, providing a more general attitude towards political intervention, suggesting the total reform of the traditional art museum, creating different modes of observation, and so on. A great number of practices encourage us to reflect on methodology and epistemology. However, the arrival of a new mode of creation and exhibition is truly pushing us to face and summarize it in theory and practice.

Through a series of discussions, art theorists, philosophers, new media artists, and associated professionals engaged in the exhibition of new media art will be invited to launch a train of discussions addressing the core concepts of new media theoretical research, including distraction, consumption, contribution, solo, chat & curiosity, gossip & imitation, new comics, the re-criticism of Internet values, resistance & surveillance, the technological subconscious of semi-group, the fan economy, etc. In the lectures and discussions we are trying to explore and generalize some underlying prerequisites of theory and the principles of practice in new media artworks and their exhibition.

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格式工厂15

Guest: Cathy van Eck (CH)

Date: 2014-11-15  14:00 ~ 2014-11-15  17:30

Address: Chronus Art Center (101, Bldg18, 50 Moganshan Rd. Shanghai)

Brought to you by Y-Institute BUA/Tongji

Final Presentation & Open Discussion

14:00 - 15:30

Cocktail reception (sponsored by swissnex China)

15:30 – 16:30

Live Performance by Cathy van Eck (CH)

16:30 - 17:30

Reservations via membership@chronusartcenter.org (please supply your full name, contact information, and the number of people attending)

Final Presentation and Open Discussion
Collaborative Strategies in Media Art: Visual-Music Performance Workshop between Tongji and BUA

Time: 14:00-15:30, November 15, 2014

Venue: Chronus Art Center (101, Bldg 18, 50 Moganshan Rd. Shanghai)

Language: English / Chinese (with simultaneous translation)

The faculties and students from College of Design and Innovation (D&I) Tongji University and Music and Media Art Section of Bern University of the Arts (BUA) will present the progress and results from the Visual-Music Performance Workshop. There are 12 Tongji students based on visual art and 16 BUA students based on music and media art that participate in this one-week workshop. Chinese and Swiss students will take the common base of knowledge in the field of contemporary media art and electronic music as a starting point and work closely together to produce innovative methods of synchronizing music with visuals, giving emphasis to real time digital translation of audio and visual sources and to the esthetic consequences.

Faculties from both universities will firstly introduce the background and collaborative strategies of the workshop, followed by the presentations by several student teams to demonstrate the concepts and videos from the workshop projects.

An open discussion between audience, students and faculty members will be held after the presentations, focused on the subject “Enhancing the collaborations in multidisciplinary tasks on an artistic and academic level”.

Live Performance by Cathy van Eck

Music Stands

Song No 3

Groene Ruis

Time: 16:30-17:30, November 15, 2014

Venue: Chronus Art Center (101, Bldg 18, 50 Moganshan Rd. Shanghai)

Tonight, Cathy van Eck performs three of her pieces, exploring the musical poetics of a plant, music stands and microphones and loudspeakers. Cathy is a composer and sound artist with an interest in relationships between everyday objects and human performers, often taking these objects out of their context and discovering unexpected potentials. She collaborates regularly with other artists, theatre directors and choreographers.

About the Artist:

Cathy van Eck holds a PhD from the University of Leiden on the topic of microphones and loudspeakers as musical instruments, and is tenured lecturer at the department of music and media art in Bern, Switzerland.

www.cathyvaneck.net

About Co-organizers:

College of Design & Innovation, Tongji University

College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University draws on the latest ideas and models of world design and innovation disciplines and gathers outstanding talents of design practice, design research, design management and design education management from all over the world in order to cultivate innovative and inclusive value orientation, up-and-coming collaborative innovation style, capability of contributing to the society and transparent and aspirant college culture.

The aim and feature of the College of Design and Innovation are to pursue academic excellence and contribute to social development. The overall goal is to establish an international, innovative, forward-looking and research-oriented world-class college of design with great sense of mission of the era, international perspective and native characteristics.

tjdi.tongji.edu.cn

Bern University of the Arts

The BUA is the first University of the Arts in Switzerland and offers an inspiring, internationally oriented and thoroughly well-equipped environment. Our university of the arts thus fulfils all essential conditions for a contemporary and future-oriented artistic and creative education. More than five hundred lecturers and staff strive to ensure that our one thousand or so students at BUA are well looked-after and able to develop in line with their wishes and expectations in their basic and further education. The music and media art section offers education programs in the field of sound art, electronic music and new media.

www.hkb.bfh.ch/en/

Y-Institute BUA/Tongji, Centre for Transdispilinary Studies

An initiative to enhance transdisciplinarity in institutional frameworks by Bern University of the Art and Tongji University Shanghai.

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Guest: Yan Jun (CN), MikkoSavela (SE)

Date: 2014-11-14  19：00 ~ 2014-11-14  20:00

Address: Chronus Art Center (101, Bldg18, 50 Moganshan Rd. Shanghai)

This event is free of charge. Reservation via membership@chronusartcenter.org(please send your full name, contact information, and the number of places to reserve).

About The Concert:

This mini concert will beperformed by Chinese musician Yan Jun and Swiss musician MikkoSavela. They are both improvisational musicians. More precisely, their improvisation abandonsexpressions of their own personal emotions and avoidsmusical syntax, to seek out the limits of improvisation;they use noises instead of notes to escape the pollution of culture and aesthetic taste;their musical instruments are either electronic instruments or guitars laid on the table, so people have come to jokingly call their music “Table Music”.

The performance of “Table Music” involves a distinct lack of bodily movements, let alone theatricality. The performers have a greater similarityto office clerks than to artists. Do bodies still exist? Have bodies become an extension of machines? Or, on the contrary, have machines have replaced bodies and become independent players? Do these calm players and their music without climaxes betray our once warm bodies? Actually, have these so-called warm bodies betrayed us and become opium dens for sweet reminiscence?

This concert will not provide you with answers. Instead, our two musicians aim to intensify the confusion and betrayal of all people.

About the artists:

Yan Jun (CN), musician.born in Lanzhou in 1973, based in Beijing. Plays improvised music and makes field recordings. His works involve electronics, feedback, site-specific performances/installations, noise, and the organization of events. His sets of feedback improvisation always follow the unstable relationship between microphones, speakers, the space, and his own bodily movements. Yan is member of FEN, Tea Rockers Quintet, and Impro Committee. He has toured in the US, Australia, Europe and Asia. He often playsin the living rooms of his audiences,using the specific spaces and objects as instruments (known as the Living Room Tour project). His Micro Feedback project is hypnosis via headphone for small audiences.

www.yanjun.org

MikkoSavela(SE),guitarist from Ume?, Sweden,born in 1984. After exploring different genres with various groups, ?Savela turned to improvisation and extended techniques.? He now uses several guitars simultaneously, that have been prepared ?in a variety of ways, along with electronics. ?Active as a live solo performer since 2004,Savela has played with Will Guthrie, Keith Rowe, Jerome Noetinger, among others.

www.mikkosavela.com

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格式工厂14

Guest: Edwin Thumboo Nadason, Jeffrey Shaw, Yap Wy-En

Date: 2014-11-08  14：00 ~ 2014-11-08  16：00

Address: Chronus Art Center (Room101, Bldg18, NO.50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)

Reservations viamembership@chronusartcenter.org (please supply your full name, contact information, and the number of people attending)

About the Lecture:

The co-creation work The Infinite Line co-created by Jeffery Shaw and Sarah Kenderdine, together with Singaporean famous poet Edwin Thumboo, will be put on display this weekend at Chronus Art Center. We feel much honored to take this opportunity to invite Prof. Edwin Thumboo to Shanghai, who will be giving us a lecture and holding a discussion with the other two guests in our center.

Prof. Thumboo enjoys “Notional Poet” reputation. This lecture will start based on his works. Through a few of his most representative poems, he will talk about how his poetic creation is connected with the fate of his motherland Singapore, including the colonial history of the nation. Mr. Yap Wy-En, another Singaporean poet and investment professional who was invited by Prof. Thumboo will make a response through his own poems.
At another part of the lecture, Professor Thumboo and Prof. Jeffrey Show will talk about the creation process of this interactive work The Infinite Line, and their thoughts during the process. Particularly on how to take advantage of today's digital technology to re-present the poem, an ancient form of art.

About Lecturer:Edwin Thumboo  Nadason (b. 22 November 1933, Singapore - ), Emeritus Professor at National University of Singapore's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, is widely regarded as the unofficial poet laureate of Singapore. He is best known for writing on national issues. His poem, Ulysses by the Merlion, is a major work in Singapore literature. He was the first Singaporean to be conferred the SEA Write Award and the Cultural Medallion for Literature in 1979 and 1980 respectively. His other awards include the National Book Development Council prizes for poetry (1978, 1980, 1994), the ASEAN Cultural and Communication Award in Literature (1987), the Public Service Star (Bar) in 1991, and the Meritorious Service Medal in 2006.

About Guest Speakers:
Jeffrey Shaw (b. 1944) has been a leading figure in new media art since the 1960's. In a prolific body of internationally exhibited and acclaimed works, he has pioneered and set benchmarks for the creative use of digital media in the fields of expanded cinema, virtual and augmented reality, immersive visualization and interactive narrative. Shaw was co-founder of the Eventstructure Research Group in Amsterdam (1969-1979), and founding director of the ZKM Institute for Visual Media Karlsruhe (1991-2002). In 2003 he co-founded and directed the UNSW iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research in Sydney, and in 2009 Shaw was appointed Chair Professor of Media Art and Dean of the School of Creative Media at City University in Hong Kong, where he is also Director of the ACIM and ALiVE research centres. In 2014 Shaw was appointed Visiting Professor at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London.

Yap Wy-En is an investment professional at APS Asset Management, and covers Chinese financial sector equities out of Shanghai, China. A CFA charterholder, Wy-En graduated with a BA in Economics and Politics from New York University in 2004, and a MBA from Tsinghua University in 2012. In his spare time, Wy-En likes to read and write, and is a published poet.

VEDIO：

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格式工厂13

Guest: Steve Buchanan

Date: 2014-11-01  17：00 ~ 2014-11-01  18：00

Address: Chronus Art Center (101, Bldg 18, 50 Moganshan Rd. Shanghai)

This event is free of charge. Reservation via membership@chronusartcenter.org (Please indicate your full name, contact information and the number of reservation).

About The Performance:

Saturday Nite Special is a suite of several compositions with reference to jazz, afro-cuban, haitian, brazilian,and contemporary electro rhythms. Incorporating such diverse elements as noize, electro-trance and standard instruments such as Marimba,Tabla, Piano, Drum Kit , Congas, Ago-go Bells, and many other sounds and orchestrations. A visual and audio feast for the rhythms of the Feet, not Tap per se in the traditional way, but swinging hard, fast and sharp in a modern way.

 

About 2nd LINE

Designed and created by Steve Buchanan 2001-2003

Like most inventions 2nd line was born of necessity. Being both a professional musician and dancer required a practical means to combine the two art forms. The instrument is a square meter divided into 12 parts, each part being a separate sensor trigger. This gives 12 different voices , in musical terms a complete chromatic scale. The instrument is both analog and digital which gives great flexibilty in application. The obvious primary usage is as an interactive dance floor, but as well it can be used as a Midi controller for any sound source Video, stage lighting and LED`S. 2nd is not neither play station or a simple loop generator it is an instrument requiring much practice and skill.That being said however it`s also a wonderfully simple and non-intimidating instrument which has an inviting character. Since it`s creation 2nd line has proven its versatility in diverse situations such as clown shows, contemporary dance, silent film accompaignment, electro –noize clubbing, jazz trios, AV performances etc.

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Photo : Guido Styger Geneva 04/ 2003

About Artist

Steve Buchanan, Musician, Dancer, Composer

Born in Philadelphia, early studies include Pat Martino, Marchall Allen, Elliott Levin, Bobby Zankel. Buchann had his first performance in 1974, and formed his first group ILTAR in 1976. As a multi-instrumentalist and performer, Steve Buchanan has acquired a varied and impressive list of credits in his 40 years career. He has shared stage and studio with Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Bill Laswell, Jozef Trefeli, Jango Edwards, Nicole Johantgen, Heike Fiedler, EXYZT 1024, Paul Garrin, Charlie Mars, Boris Edelstein. Buchanan has performed in many cities of Europe, America, Africa and China, and his China Tour 2014 includes the cities of Chang Sha, Shen Zhen, Zhang Shan, Guang Zhou, Shanghai and Beijing.

http://www.garagecube.com/stevebuchanan/

Special Thanks to

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