The idea of physically-based rendering is that we want to model light in a way that's more realistic. There's no authoritative definition of what counts as physically-based rendering and what doesn't, but the most essential criteria is that our lighting calculation, which in physically-based rendering will call the bi-directional reflectance distribution function, this calculation should account first for energy conservation such that when light energy strikes a surface, we don't reflect off that surface more light energy than what is coming in. Second, we want to account for the microfacets of surfaces such that the light interacts differently for smooth surfaces versus rough surfaces. Thirdly, we should account for how light interacts differently with metal versus non-metal surfaces, a.k.a. dielectric surfaces. And fourthly, we should account for the fanelle effect, which is a phenomenon where light striking a surface at a shear angle, more of that light is going to bounce off at the reflected angle rather than get absorbed. If you look straight down at a wooden floor, it's not going to look super glossy, but when the floor is at a shear angle to your eye, then it'll look more glossy because more of the light is being reflected at the inverse angle.   And left to right, the spheres are increasing in roughness. It's the minimum roughness in the left column and the maximum on the right. And bottom to top, the spheres are increasing in metalness. The ones at the bottom are not metal at all, and the ones at the top are full metal. As you can see, with increasing roughness, the specular highlights get bigger but fainter. Metalness increases the intensity of the specular highlight a bit, but more noticeable about the metalness is that they have less diffuse reflection. So outside the specular highlight, they're just getting darker, they're not as intensely red. Because that's how metals behave. The light energy that absorbs into the metal, unlike with non-metal materials, tends not to escape. Before looking at the code, there are a few key formulas we're going to employ. The first is an approximation of the Fresnel effect called Fresnel-Schlick. It takes in three parameters. H is the bisecting vector between V and the vector to the light. And then F sub-zero, we can call that the base reflectivity. This is actually a VEC-3, RGB values between zero and one. And for dielectric materials, like say plastic, glass, and water, these values are going to be very low. For water, the RGBs are all 0.02. But then for metals, these values are much higher. At the low end, you have say iron, which is 0.56, 0.57, 0.58. And then at the high end, you have metals like silver, which is 0.95, 0.93, and 0.88. Putting F sub-zero aside, though, what do H and V do in this formula? Well, we get their dot product, such that when they point in the same direction, they get a value of one. And as they diverge, you get a value closer to zero. Well, we invert that by subtracting from one. And so this rightmost term here that's being raised to the power of five, the larger H and V diverge, the larger this value gets. As for F sub-zero, let's consider first say water, for which again, the F sub-zero value is 0.02, 0.02, 0.02. Well, one minus a very small value gets us a value close to one. In contrast for a metal like, say, silver, where the R component is 0.95, well, regardless of the H and V value, the R component output of this formula is going to be 0.95 plus a little something. The larger the base reflectivity, the less H and V is going to matter. So you could say that for dialectics like water and glass, there's a stronger Fresnel effect. When we look down at our wood floor, it's a non-metallic surface, and so it has a strong Fresnel effect. It doesn't look glossy straight down, but it looks glossy side-on. Anyway, this gets us a value for Fresnel, which effectively is going to determine for us how much of the energy striking a surface is reflecting in a specular fashion. And when we take into account energy conservation, it's only the remainder of the energy that can contribute to any diffuse reflections. Another formula we need is a normal distribution function. In this case, the Trowbridge writes GGX, normal distribution function. I don't know what the GGX stands for, but what this gets us is an estimation of what proportion of the micro facets of a surface, how many of them are aligned with our halfway vector, our bisecting vector, such that the light hitting those micro facets is going to bounce off at an angle towards their camera. And here's the normal, h is our halfway vector, and alpha is a value between 0 and 1, denoting roughness. The larger the value, the rougher the surface. And as you can see, the rougher the surface, the larger, but less intense, the specular highlight. So that full roughness for our sphere, it doesn't look like a highlight at all, the whole sphere just looks gray. This makes sense because when our normal is aligned with a halfway vector, then for a smooth surface, most of the micro facets should also be aligned with the halfway vector. The rougher our surface gets, the less this is the case. One more formula we'll need is an estimation of how many of the micro facets in our surface are self-shadowing. If you zoom way in to a point on the surface, some micro facets stick out, such that for light coming in from sheer angles, that micro facet is actually blocking light reaching other micro facets. And so when light strikes the surface, the more that light is coming in at an angle and the rougher the surface, the more we get self-shadowing amongst the micro facets. The formula we want here is called Smith's Method, which employs the Schlick GGX geometry function, and K here is our measure of roughness. Don't ask me why it's not called alpha. But anyway, as you can see in the diagram, the points on the surface that are angled from the light have a stronger self-shadowing effect, and so they're going to be a bit darker. Looking finally at the shader code, for each of the spheres we use the same albedo color, but we're using different roughness and metallic parameters. This function here is our normal distribution function. It's just the formula translated into code. Here's the Smith's Method formula translated into code, and here's the Fresnel Schlick approximation. We'll call these functions from main, which starts by computing the normal and the view vector. We also get a base reflectivity, which we're going to feed into the Fresnel function. The built-in mix function interpolates between two values, a start and end value here, Vect3 of .04 and albedo, another Vect3, and when metallic is zero, we get the start value. When it's one, we get the end value, and then for values between zero and one, we get interpolated values in between. So as our metallic parameter gets closer to one, the more our base reflectivity is going to match the albedo. This loop is where we're doing the calculation for each of the four lights. We accumulate the output luminance in this variable, LO. And we'll come back to this loop, but looking past it first, having computed LO, we simply add it to our ambient light computed right here to get our color. Then we do our tone mapping, gamma correction, and that's our output color. Looking back at the loop, we're going to need the light vector L, the halfway bisecting vector. We compute the distance to the light, use that for our attenuation, and that gets us an input radiance value, a measure of light energy coming in from this light source. This all then gets fed into our bidirectional reflectance distribution function, which in this case is the correct torrents, BRDF. We're going to need the dot products between N and V and an L, H and V and N and H. And note that for N dot V and N dot L, to prevent divide by zero errors down the line, we can't have these values be zero, so make sure there's something at least a little greater than zero. We then compute our normal distribution value, we'll call D, the result of the geometry function, the self-shadowing estimation we call that G, and the result from our funnel function we'll call F. In cooked torrents, we then get our measure of specular light by multiplying these all together and dividing by four times N dot V and N dot L. Because we're dividing by N dot V and N dot L, that's why they can't be zero here. Now, I can't explain all the logic here, but understand that D is going to be a value between zero and one that gets larger closer to one the more the micro facets are aligned to H. G is going to be a value between zero and one that gets smaller closer to zero the more the micro facets are shadowed by other micro facets. And F is going to be our GB values, also between zero and one, which are going to get closer to one the more the light vector and the view vector are at a sheer angle to the surface. N dot V and N dot L are also going to be in between zero and one, and because we're dividing the specular by them, the closer these values are to zero the larger the specular value is going to get. Again, I can't explain exactly the logic here, but it does make sense that as the view vector and the light vector diverge from the normal, the more intense the specular light should get. Now, as for the diffuse light, that's denoted here as KD, and this is computed as simply one minus F because thanks to energy conservation whatever is bounced off as specular light, our diffuse light can only be made up of the energy left over. But then the larger a metallic parameter, the more KD is diminished. If metallic is one, then the diffuse component goes all the way to zero because metals actually have no diffuse light. Now, in reality, a material is either metallic or not, it's basically binary zero or one but because metallic surfaces can have dust and dirt on them, they can get scuffed up we want those surfaces to render as partially metallic even though in reality something is either metal or not. Having computed KD, we can finally get our output luminance for this one light by multiplying the KD times the albedo divided by pi, for reasons I don't really understand other than the specular term is also divided by pi in the distribution function up here it's effectively divided by pi, I think that's the rationale basically to even out the diffuse and specular components, but I can't say for sure we then add the diffuse and the specular together, multiplied by the incoming radiance but just like in fog lighting, the incoming light is diminished when it hits the surface at an angle we only get the full radiance energy when it's hitting the surface perpendicular straight on and note two differences from fog shading here for one, the specular is effectively also being multiplied by n.l, not just our diffuse light and also note that only the diffuse is multiplied by the albedo the specular light isn't being mixed with the albedo color at all and this better matches physical reality it's the diffuse light, the light that partially absorbs into the surface and bounces around that picks up the color property of that material the specular component just bounces off the surface anyway, this is how we get the output luminance for each light add them all together and then add them together with the ambient getting us our output color to which we apply the tone mapping and gamma correction now in our example, each sphere was rendered with its own metallic and roughness value but it was the same metallic and roughness value applied across the whole sphere that may be fine for some objects we want to render but in many cases, the metalness and the roughness might vary across a surface a metal surface for example might have some parts that are dirtier, rustier and more scuffed than others so to have metalness and roughness that varies across the surface we can get those values per point by sampling from textures for extra detail, we can also bring in an ambient occlusion map which effectively denotes the subtle self-shadowing from a complex rough surface if say you have small creases and grooves and dents on the surface a little less ambient light is going to reach into points on those surfaces be clear though that these AO maps do not replace other ambient occlusion we might still apply screen space ambient occlusion which is calculated based on our geometry and so isn't going to capture any detail within a single surface that's what the AO maps are for so if we want to use these textures instead of the uniforms like we had before what that looks like in code is very straightforward we just sample from the appropriate textures so what this looks like in action is we have all of these maps being applied onto these spheres and note in this scene we just have one light instead of the four like we did before but anyway if we zoom in you can see there's quite a bit of lighting detail going on here thanks to all those textures


Thank you Fred that's that was great I'm gonna what I decided to read tonight, but before I do that I like to dedicate this reading to all the students I've had in the MFA over the last six years So I don't want to thank you and this is for you Just a brief set up. I decided to read Not the new novel I was writing about Germany in 1936, but from now I finished a while ago called resting places It won the 2014 testing prize and it'll be published sometime next year this year It's about a millage woman named Elizabeth who lost her 21 year old son Luke in a car accident During a cross-country car trip another road trip He died in Mexico though. He had told his mother and father that he was heading out to San Francisco I need to set up a little because I'm reading from the middle of the novel chapter 11 Elizabeth has had lots of questions about the facts surrounding her son's death including Inconsistencies in the police report as well as the fact that Luke called her on the night of the accident and said he needed to talk to her About something presumably important. She didn't take the call Because she was with her lover that night, which as you can imagine this compounds the situation adds great deals In addition to her confusion a great deal guilt to the situation She has spent the past year since her son's death Drinking too much pulling away from her husband Zach and obsessing about the accident She has tried to piece together where he went on his trip using credit card receipts and reviewing his phone records and Calling people he contacted and might have talked to in his last few days Based on a chance encounter with a stranger. She met along the highway, and that's the chapter I read a couple of years ago Elizabeth has decided to draw drive country cross country Following the route her son took out to Mexico hoping to understand more about her son's death She's also stopping at various this this cansoes Which is the Spanish word for resting places and those are those roadside memorials that you see everywhere The last few years of her life. She and Luke had not been I had been at odds He had been distant and moody and sullen and as chapter 11 opens She has been on this road trip for a couple of days, and she had left in the middle of the night She she leaves from Connecticut right around this area in fact The previous night to this chapter from the motel room where she stayed Elizabeth had a troubling conversation with her husband Zach about Luke's death Bringing up a new and troubling possibility That has recently occurred to her based on her trip What if the accident wasn't an accident? What if he had meant to end his life? Zach told her such an idea was crazy Why couldn't she just accept that their son's death was simply something that happened without a sinister purpose or darker meaning in Passing he casually mentioned to Elizabeth that their son had seen his ex-girlfriend girlfriend TJ that summer and he had mentioned it to the father and Zach mentions it to his wife As the chapter opens. She is leaving the motel room and getting ready to continue her journey Chapter 11 resting places The storm having spent its fury the morning stretched out with a haggard and introspective demeanor like one waking after the debauched night of revelry Leaves and branches littered the road Debris was thrown over the parking lot and up near the motel office a garbage can lay overturned a tree of brazen crows gorging themselves on its contents as Elizabeth opened her car door. They took off squawking vociferously Stuck to the windshield was a newspaper flyer.  He said perhaps she was perhaps all of this was just a matter of grasping at straws She thought too of what he told her about Luke seeing TJ that summer had her son started dating her again There was that one brief phone call Luke Luke had made to TJ when he was on the trip It was odd that these seemingly inconsequential and desperate facts Surrounding her son appeared to have such significance now such import and nuance They were like the dots. She felt she needed to connect in order to understand the picture surrounding his death Elizabeth warned herself not to do what she was contemplating But lately she hadn't heeded her own warnings lately warnings seemed seemed made for others She felt reckless and irresponsible for only law being whatever would illuminate Luke's end She took her out her cell phone and looked up TJ's number After several rings the young woman's familiar voice came on. Hi. This is this is Tess I'm not here right now, but leave a message and I'll call you back. Ciao Elizabeth was surprised to hear her user first name instead of her initials In fact, she wasn't even sure what the J stood for she had always just been TJ The voice brought back a painful flood of memories of the girl who used to sit in the den with Luke Eating pizza watching TV or studying for a test with her son Her girlish laughter fluttering in the air filling the house with joy She missed TJ missed even more how her son used to act when he was around her happy carefree Vibrant with life Elizabeth hadn't seen the girl in nearly two years She'd run into TJ's mother at the dry cleaners in town a few months before it was an awkward meeting They both smiled too much and Mrs. Pearson acted as if Elizabeth was 80 and hard of hearing She spoke too loudly and rest her hand patronizingly on Elizabeth's wrist When Elizabeth asked how TJ was doing the woman said her daughter had gotten a job up in Boston at the Fine Arts Museum Now when it came time to leave a message Elizabeth thought no, this is all wrong. Why disturb the poor kid needlessly bringing up such past sorrow Elizabeth hung up without saying anything That day she drove the length of Tennessee a seemingly endless parallelogram of rolling hills Cattle and horse farms shimmering lakes dotted with homes and massive tourist tourist signs Advertising the likes of Forbidden Caverns Opryland Graceland Gatlinburg the Johnny Cash Museum the Jack Daniels Distillery and Baptist Church after Baptist Church One sign in particular caught her attention set off the highway along the a sloping pasture populated by black Angus cattle It proclaimed simply Inexplicably when you die you will see God Beneath the words appeared what seemed to be a spiky red EKG line Jumping up and down with life until finally flat lighting under God's name presumably indicate indicating death Like the life insurance sign she'd seen the first night on the road This one too seemed a hard-sell technique of the most overbearing kind though She wasn't sure what was being marketed other than simple fear She passed signs for small towns with hoaking sounding names like Crab Orchard Helen's Gap Carthage Junction Horse Corners Bear Hollow She listened to the lulling twang of more country stations while drinking Red Bull to stay awake and munching on trail Mix around to she stopped and filled up the gas and bought a dry as Carbward Sandwich at a convenience store to blunt the bell call of hunger The storm had ushered in its way cooler dryer weather She could smell the change in the air a clean sharp odor like ammonia Sometime later she found herself passing through a broad valley framed by low humpback hills in The distance and immediately on either side of the interstate green pastures plowed over fields and occasional stand of pine woods Twilight was coming on fast some cars in the opposite lane already had their headlights on and she was reminded to turn hers on as well She thought again of what Zach had told her how Luke had seen TJ that summer Maybe the girl had some inkling of where her son's mind was what he was thinking before he died Elizabeth decided not to heed her earlier warning if there was a slightest chance TJ could shed some light on her son She would take it. She didn't want to leave any stone unturned So she called again and got the recording this time though. She left a message. Hi TJ She said she didn't use tasks. That wasn't the girl. She knew It's Mrs. Girlacre Luke's mom. How are you? She paused for a moment then added do you think you could call me when you get a chance Perhaps if she hadn't been on the phone Perhaps if she'd been paying attention more attention to the present instead of poking around in the cluttered debris of the past She'd have seen it a second earlier and had a chance to swerve Out of the way to avoid the unavoidable a sudden streak of brownish gray appeared just ahead and off to her right in the headlights Periphery it had bolted from some woods near the shoulder of the highway and appeared to fly Effortlessly into the tunnel of her headlights It was upon her or rather her sob and the brownish gray object seemed to meet at the intersection of their respective Trajectories as if there had been some intentionality to their separate movements an unstated agreement to be joined at exactly that point in Time and space Elizabeth help felt helpless didn't have the slightest chance to do anything hit the brakes were Tense herself for the impact utter a sound there was a nauseating Swank sound a deep bone breaking clatter as the deer's left flank Collided with the right front of Elizabeth's car She felt the jolt in his shoulder blades then felt herself being thrown forward and her nose slamming into the steering wheel She actually saw stars like in the cartoons little white pieces of light Dancing in front of rise and then the next moment not so much in slow motion as in a series of distinct still frames Still frames the creature was first suspended upside down over the hood of the car antlers pointing earthward then flattened against the windshield with an ear splitting and Finally in the rear view lying crumpled along the shoulder of the road. This all happened so fast Elizabeth hadn't even had time to be frightened Looking through a windshield and now appeared as as if glazed over with a thick sheet of ice She instinctively tried to steer the car toward the shoulder toward a shoulder of the road She couldn't see even then she could tell something was terribly wrong The steering wheel fought her like some sort of headstrong beast Felt as if it wanted to keep the car going straight on down the highway And she had to use all her strength to bend the wheel to her will When she'd finally managed to pull the car to a bumpy stop on the shoulder She sat there for a moment trembling her heart wrapping fiercely in her chest now. She had time to be afraid Damn, she cried at last Recovering her wit she got out and stood her head spinning slightly then went around to the front of the car With the light from her phone She saw that the right front fender was stove in their bumper and grill crumpled the headlights smashed and the assembly dangling Like in a nucleated eye her car appeared as if it had tangled with a Mack truck rather than a single frightened deer It was only then that she became aware of a throbbing in her head She reached up and touched the bridge of her nose The nose itself was mostly numb, but when she removed her hand or fingers or cover with something slippery and dark She was bleeding Walking back to the car She glanced up the highway and saw in the headlights of the oncoming traffic traffic The still lifeless form of the deer lying stretched out along the shoulder She thought of heading back and seeing to the poor creature Though viewing its broken and bleeding form up close would probably be the last straw She couldn't bear that so instead she got in her car avoided looking in the rear view mirror God, what would she give for the pint of cutty sark to be waiting for her in the glove compartment right now? She dialed a triple-a number. I just hit a deer. She's exclaimed to the operator shaking First things first the woman said she had a high-pitched twangy accent and the smokers raspy voice. Are you all right, ma'am? Mostly yes is the vehicle drivable. I don't think so. I don't know The operator took Elizabeth's information and where the accident occurred And then she told her she'd had someone out there as soon as she as possible But we're awful busy tonight ma'am on a kind of a storm yesterday I'm out in the middle of nowhere. Elizabeth explained to the woman and it's going to be dark soon Like I said, we'll have somebody out there as soon as we can the woman advised in the meantime You all want to lock your doors and stay in the car and don't talk to strangers Don't talk to strangers Elizabeth thought as she hung up Yet she went ahead and locked the doors and sat way up in the seat to look formidable to any would-be attacker For company. She listened to the radio When Freddy fenders wasted days and wasted nights came on Elizabeth couldn't fail to appreciate the army She'd been waiting there for nearly an hour when the winter cell finally rang Jesus it's about time.  Oh TJ. I'm sorry. I thought you were someone else How are you miss girlacker? I'm fine. Elizabeth replied. Well, that's a fine. Actually. I've just been in that car accident Oh, my goodness. Are you okay? Yeah, I just hit a gear. I'm waiting for the tow truck The conversation struck Elizabeth is peculiar here She just killed a deer was stranded along some highway in Tennessee and now if she was talking to her dead son's girlfriend ex-girlfriend Can I do anything TJ asked and call anybody for you? No, I think I'm all set the tow truck should be here any minute. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly your mom says You're living in Boston now. Yes working at the fine arts museum. That sounds exciting. Elizabeth said not really Not unless you consider a leading first grade tour is exciting. She said with a self-deprecating laugh The laugh was so familiar Elizabeth had an image of her sitting on the couch with her son for sandy blonde hair tied in a loose ponytail Her hand touching Luke's flannel shirted arm the first girl her son lived perhaps the only girl Still it's a start in Boston's a great city live in Elizabeth offered It's a lot more excited in Gar's Point another laughed which Elizabeth joined in nervously Laughing caused her nose to ache you go by test now, huh? Yeah, sort of it sounds more professional But you still can call me tests. So how are you? I'm good. The young woman replied busy This was followed by a pause awkward and weighty Which made Elizabeth wonder if you were debating whether or not to tell her something finally TJ blurred out. I'm engaged. Oh Elizabeth exclaimed feeling a shock akin to cutting oneself a chopping vegetables that moment of utter surprise Followed a few seconds later by the stabbing pain It shouldn't have hurt as much as it did but it did Another death as if yet another part of Luke a piece of the future had just been erased She called in how the girl's mother it seemed evasive when TJ had brought had been brought up Had she not wanted to be the one to tell her about engagement Elizabeth managed to recover quickly though. That's wonderful anyone from town. No, I met him in college Greg That's his name. Wow Congratulations, so when's the big day? We haven't set a date yet. We're not in any rush No sense in rushing it to things. The loser said that's great news. I'm so happy for you and she was Happy for that is she'd always loved TJ like a daughter in fact the one she never had But in the next moment Elizabeth found herself wondering just where that had left TJ and Luke Zach had said they'd gotten together several times the summer before their senior year the summer Luke died Had this future husband of hers is Greg Ben picture then had TJ be considering getting back together with Luke And it was only his death that put an end to their renewed relationship and allowed her to begin another one Elizabeth could recall how devastated TJ appeared at the funeral how much Luke's death death seemed to affect her How tragic that would have been if they finally gotten together back together again only to be separated by his sudden death And now TJ her one-time future daughter-in-law the potential mother of her grandchildren was going to marry someone else Elizabeth had all she could do not to start bawling She's cleansed her jaw. Don't she said to herself. Don't put that on TJ. It wasn't her fault. God What was she thinking contacting the girl? Elizabeth contact that contemplated making up some excuse for not wanting to talk for wanting to talk perhaps saying she was Simply interested in finding out what TJ was doing after all the girl had been such a large part of her son's life Not to mention hers and Zach's for so many years, but then again, Elizabeth had to admit she was curious If TJ and Luke had started to date again Why hadn't he spoke to his mother and if something had started up again between the two perhaps? It was somehow related to what he had wanted to tell Elizabeth that night More dots to be connected more pieces of the puzzle The reason I called that I wanted to ask you something about Luke. I'll leave this said sure miss girl Ecker The night he died he called me. He left a message on my phone saying it's something important He wanted to tell talk about but unfortunately. We never got the chance. Oh That's terrible. Yes, it has been not knowing what he wanted. That's why I called you I thought you might have some clue Outside in the highway the traffic roared by Elizabeth's car shuddering in the wake of every vehicle that passed the noise Making it sometimes difficult to hear TJ's soft voice Me TJ said I mean you and Luke were so close. Well, we were but not for a while Hadn't the two of you started seeing each other again. What? My husband said Luke told him that the two of you had gone out a few times that summer We didn't really go out miss the girl Ecker. We saw each other a few times hung out a little together as friends So you two weren't back together me and Luke.  No Elizabeth touched her nose and felt blood on her fingers cool and slippery to the touch May I ask you a personal question? Sure. I guess I'll teach you said but her tone was tended You and Luke always seemed so good together Elizabeth said I even thought you guys get married someday Me too miss girl Ecker then what happened? TJ was silent for a moment yet over the noise of the highway Elizabeth thought she caught a faint sniffling sound coming from the other end of the phone I'm sorry TJ Elizabeth offered. I probably shouldn't brought it up. No, it's it's all right It's just that I get so sad whenever I think about Luke I really liked him then like an unwelcome confession for what she felt guilty. She added loved him actually and he really loved you TJ not really What do you mean not really he loved me as a friend TJ said as a friend my god Luke was head over heels about you No, Mrs. Girl Ecker. It was the other way around. I was the one crazy about your son always was ever since like sixth grade Right then Elizabeth heard the intrusive beeping of another phone call. Could you hold for a minute TJ? That's probably a tow truck. Of course. Hello Elizabeth said to the other crawler ma'am our truck is running a little late the same woman's voice drawled It's been an hour already. He'll be there just as soon as he can Elizabeth click back to TJ. Sorry about that I'm a little confused TJ if you were so crazy about my son. Why did you break up with him me? She said her voice incredulous Luke was the one who didn't want to go out anymore But I was under the impression you didn't want to go out with him that you wanted to date other people Who told you that? Luke that's not true. Mrs. Girl Ecker. He was the one who broke it off with me. God. I cried for weeks Elizabeth sat there for a moment trying to digest the information She felt the dull throbbing emanating from where she'd hit her nose Radiating radiating back into her skull. It seemed to pulsate there like another heartbeat Why would Luke have lied to her? Why didn't you want her to know that he was the one who initiated the breakup? It didn't make sense She thought of simply dropping the whole thing saying goodbye to TJ Wishing her luck in it her new life and letting the past sink down into oblivion Instead though, Elizabeth asked why would he lie to me like that TJ? I don't know Mrs. Girl Ecker Girl Ecker, but it's so odd. Yes, it is. So you're saying Luke ended it? That's right Elizabeth's phone rang again, but this time she decided not to get it. Why do you think he did that TJ? I really don't know Mrs. Girl Ecker, but it doesn't really matter now. Does it? Elizabeth knew she was right. It was what Zach had been telling her all along What good would knowing any of this be now? They were kids. They'd split up What was the big deal? Who broke broke up with whom? Elizabeth shivered feeling suddenly cold. It was completely dark out now and sitting there on the side of the highway She felt helpless and vulnerable felt like that time they temporary temporarily lost week in Wales during their vacation As if as if at the mercy of unknown and hostile forces Stopped she warned herself before it's too late But something in her a need both perverse and yet inexorable compelled her forward It matters to me TJ. I Don't think he was interested. She said pausing and having a relationship anymore. You mean with you with anyone really? I felt Luke pulling away for a long while. Was it somebody else? Elizabeth said another girl I don't think so. He didn't seem to be interested in women anymore. Not in that way In what way Elizabeth said feeling a hot pressure building in her throat Sexually TJ said what are you saying TJ? He didn't seem to be interested in me in that way Are you saying that my son was gay? I'm not sure What do you mean? You're not sure Elizabeth cried anger and bewilderment leeching into her voice Elizabeth thought she heard a voice whisper in the background of the foam a young man's voice Who is that was that her fiance the Greg who had replaced her Luke? He seemed confused mr. Gerlacker confused you mean about his sexual orientation About a lot of things, but you dated him for the years of it. They said do you think he was gay? I Don't know Really in that last year, so I felt there was something different about Luke something that had become between us Elizabeth recalled but Luke had Luke's one-time best friend grift had told her about Luke changing being in his own little world How do you mean different TJ? I don't know how to explain it I think he was struggling with something he talked about going away for a while away Maybe joining the Peace Corps after graduation or teaching out on an Indian reservation Peace Corps Indian reservation all this came as a surprise Who is it as if Luke was a complete stranger to her someone who had never she had never really known?  She told herself She didn't need to hear anymore. She didn't need for this to go on She could pretend that this conversation never even took place and yet once started It seems she couldn't stop as if her own curiosity had an irresistible momentum that carried her onward even against her will I'm his mother Elizabeth said defensively.  Lacker. Then what are you saying? He felt he couldn't talk to you what he thought you wouldn't understand Her comments felt like a slap in the face. In fact, Elizabeth felt her cheeks turned hot with embarrassment. Really? He said that yes in a supercilious tone Elizabeth said frankly I find all of this very hard to believe hurt and angered by what TJ had said Elizabeth wanted to lash out the lawyer in her seemed to take over she hardened herself slipped into a ruthless cross examination mode Are you going to deny the two of you were intimate? She challenged Mrs. Gerlacker, please were you I'd rather not talk about if you don't mind well I do mind if you're going to accuse my son of being gay at least you could provide evidence Elizabeth said as if this were a child and she were cross examining a hostile witness.  I loved I loved Luke The simple invocation of her son's name and the profession of her love for him stopped Elizabeth dead in her tracks She realized suddenly she'd overstepped any sort of decency TJ was right whatever her and Luke's relationship was or wasn't it certainly was none of her business She took a breath I'm so sorry TJ. Please forgive me. It's okay. No, it's not okay. You were always a wonderful friend to Luke and to my Husband and me. I had no right to say those things Don't worry about that. I just wish things had turned out differently. They were silent for a moment Can I ask you one more question? Sure when you met him that summer? Do you think whatever he was going through was troubling him then? Yes, I think that's why he wanted to get away really Yes, he talked about driving cross-country to clear his head After a while, they said they're to buys and hung up Elizabeth sat there feeling numb to more than anything a kind of shell shock as if she tried to as she tried to Process all the TJ had said to her that Luke was the one to break off the relationship That he was confused that he wasn't interested in women that the trip had been means to clear his head That he was as TJ put it Struggling with something Elizabeth also felt embarrassed for how she think how cool she been to TJ She had no right to say those things to the poor kid yet would trouble the Lizbeth most perhaps was the fact that Luke felt He couldn't talk to her couldn't tell her any of this of course if he had been gay She'd have still loved him. She'd have loved him that no matter what that wasn't the issue But if he were gay and that was still a big if to Liz's mind, why hadn't she known? How could he be so utterly incomplete how could she be so utterly and completely in the dark about her son's sexual orientation? Wouldn't she? Shouldn't she have seen clues strewn along the way? How could a mother have missed such an enormous part of her son's life? And how could Luke have managed to keep something that huge a secret from her and Zach all those years under the same roof? If it were true What sort of mother had she been that he didn't trust her enough to be able to place in her care something so essential So crucial to what who he was at the same time Who would have explained certain things the distance she felt in her son that inward turning she had sensed in Luke? God she thought she'd been such a fool for going on this trip for opening up this terrible can of worms. Thank you This novel I'll be try to be brief this novel start out a number of years ago by stopping at those memorials those discontos those roadside memorials I stopped at Dozens and then later hundreds and we get out and go up to and and look at what those things said How many people have done that stopped you should do it sometime Some are just very simple stones Some have whole histories and stories and part of the stories for going cross-country and looking at these things and as I did that I started to understand the grief of a mother or of anybody a father a son You know anybody there was one the very first one.  I finally stopped and There was all this you know debris a flotsam Presence gifts Tokens of a person's love and there was something from a son to a father and a mother to the son and it was a young man in his 30s, there was a picture laminate on his post and I started to feel as what grief was there in this context I Don't know I don't have a good answer for that. I wanted some distance for me and And and I you know I what I tell writers sometimes you don't take the easy choice you take one that's going to be more interesting chapter 11 Well There there's a making number of changes in chapters 1 through 10 And the construction is not quite done yet The movers are still coming there are a couple chapters I could have read but I thought I thought there's a there's a chapter I think it's chapter 2 now And I have read that chapter some of the faculty here have been here for a couple of years heard me tell that where she stops Early on the novel where she stops and sees a man at the side of the road and it's pouring rain And she's not quite sure what he's doing and she stops Before she's has even an inkling that she's going to go on this trip to where he died And she sees his man and she gets out of the car and he's in pouring rain And she gets on before she gets right up to him She sees he's kneeling and praying the rain to one of these roadside morals I've read that chapter, and I just didn't want to read that chapter again That would have been an easier chapter because there's a lot less that happens before that be a lot less Explanation, but I've read that before and I wanted to test this one out So this is a this is a revised chapter that is been in the works for a while It's been there for a long time the book is finished. I'm just making some revisions. Yeah road trip Well It is it here it's it's after the first hundred pages is are about her home in this Connecticut town She's a she does a lot of pro bono work with a a an island off the coast of Connecticut And she does pro bono work for somebody she works with women and and then she meets this man she's Established how distant she is with her husband and and then the background and she meets this man again And she's got problems at work. She has problems with her husband And after me having two meetings with man She met along the roadside she decides to go cross country and and she's going to go to the spot Where he died in New Mexico and I can talk about research. I did that I drove cross country I followed the route that she would it be take would be taking it took hundreds of pictures and went out this little desert town in northern Mexico and That's where her son died And there was a reference earlier the prologue I Was thinking about cutting it but the the editors really liked it five-page prologue where Luke is a five-year-old boy and they go on a trip from England to to From Wales to Ireland on that midnight ferry you've ever been over there and when they get out they misplace him He gets lost for a few minutes and it's the most petrifying moment for ten minutes They've lost him and they think and she already jumps ahead as any parent would he's gone He's missing I'll never get him again, and then you find him and that is the kind of a threat That's gonna have 21 or 20 15 years later, and this time he doesn't come back. He's he's been killed About page 100 and the and it's the next 250 so about 30% of of establishing things at home, and then the road trip Yeah Right My agent and my editors it would very much like me to write one kind of thing and I follow my interests, and I have three historical novels and and I'm working on a historic that this German novel set in 36 and about 60% I was almost gonna read from that But I just not finished it And yeah, the other three or four are contemporary my show Sorry, I'd like to go back before I follow whatever fine. I find interesting this story somewhere along the line I saw these these Burrwoodside memorials they this these discounts house, and I said I got to stop some time and Finally in New Hampshire was the first time and then if you go back to the second one was at exit 80 or 81 Right outside of New London if you're going east Okay, and you look off. There's this kind of clover leaf exit Okay, and so in the middle of the clover leaf on the right hand exit around 80 81 There's this kind of stand of trees and there are two little crosses and one time I had seen it coming up to Enders and sometime later I I drove out here throw off clover leaf stop climbed a 10-foot chain link fence went down and went up there sat there to pictures and You know it was it was a moment of trying to understand What what a parent would go through and then I did that over and over and over again I gave a lecture about a year and a half ago about the empathetic imagination Okay, there's lots of things is right. We don't know and hopefully we will never know But as right as we we can't be in all places and experience all things But we can try to use our imagination empathetic Imagine that you see your condescending but you're trying to understand how a parent would lose a child or a father We heard somebody read a story about a father a sick father today Shannon You know and so we try to understand With You know I talked in my in the workshop today about using dialogue right and And this is the kind of the hot white center of fiction You know for me anyway Where you're putting two characters in a moment of great intensity on the stage and letting them have at it with each other And there's about up in those point There's about three or four really I think white hot moments where there's stuff that's happening One is with the man along this highway one is with her husband another is another one with that man along the highway And then this is there's a couple before that but this is really important It goes on for several many pages and I had to rewrite a lot of times because the facts of what I was doing changed Okay, and this Yeah, and this may actually be a red heron What have a lot yeah, that's a really good point You know most of my novels have a major driving force Okay, a strong plot. I do like that. I love characterization. I love great characters. I love interesting conflicts I love wonderful prose, but I also like a strong plot I like I like to be carried along on that kind of wave and And I don't like the plot to overwhelm character I like the plot to be strong enough But I like the characters in the situation the pros to be strong so that you can stop every once in a while and read passages more slowly and I guess I learned you know I Learned to trust that you don't I feel comfortable when I have a driving plot and Except that I had this kind of skeleton of a road trip. It was a much more of a Eulogy, you know where she's doing a lot of thinking on this trip before she goes in and later And at some point it's almost too much thinking, you know, I had to get her doing some things too You know, she can't just sit there being thinking, you know, she's got to do something, you know And the business about the deer where she's on the phone Thinking about something or try thinking about what what she whether she should be asking her son's girlfriend It was not even his girlfriend anymore about their past and whether having sex and you know Well, she wouldn't didn't plan on it She just sort of wanted what was he feeling and you know, I love them and we you know And she wanted the simple answer and she didn't get a simple answer and the business about the deer I was up in New Hampshire It was right when the stock market was collapsing And I'm on the phone talking to my stockbroker and he's telling me how he's just relax relax relax I'm losing all my money And and I'm trying to concentrate. I'm going through these woods and wouldn't you know a goddamn deer has to come running out Right then. Okay. Well, I'm losing money. I hit him. He flies over the hood just like this I see him out of the quarter mile. I go flying back and lying there. I get out.  He's still trying to say relax relax I just said I had a deer too and it's your fault and I go back and the deer got up and ran it to the woods I come back to my car and it's $5,000 damage But that was a real thing I Guess I learned not to trust your accountant and watch out for deer Other questions Yeah, I Mentioned this in my class the importance and I think Peter mentioned it today about the importance of models I always talk about I have three or four models I was reading a book called out of Kittridge. I had read it before I went back and reread it And I read it almost the way we'd read a prayer every morning To get me into a woman's head and to get me into any head in a deep complex kind of way And not a simple way and I and I would read that over and over again That didn't give me much in terms of structure because there's structures all over the place I have a clearer structure to this book But that was one of them Anything else? How about one There is something about writing did you find a commonality in these best consoles where they mostly younger people? Yeah at one point she says Either right before this chapter right after I forget she said either as she drove south They were much more reckless drivers or much more religious because they were everywhere and they were and Starting in Virginia and certainly through Tennessee and through many through Arkansas tons through Texas in New Mexico I think the Catholic influence is is pronounced and I think it's one aspect of it But you'd see hundreds and after a while I was going with a buddy of mine Across country and we'd stop and we'd stop and we'd stop and then we stopped stopping at every one We look at ones. They're pretty interesting. I'll just give you a couple. There was one in in New Mexico right outside of Roswell and there was this cross and It was on a Bob next to a Bargore fence. There was a guitar couple guitars There was like a field hockey stick and it was this picture of this beautiful Hispanic girl You know sort of laminated and nailed to the fence post and all these flowers and all this stuff and you know a little Madonna's and and Piatah is in fact, there's one scene where there's a in another scene There's a small little Piatah in one of these things and she talks about a mother holding her dead son in her arms And she said why didn't I hold my son in the morgue when I saw him and she feels great Regret for not doing that. So in this one. It was really funny I saw all this stuff and I got on when we stopped Online and I Google and it came up and this young woman was like 19 or 20 and she was killed But she was the one who killed five other people and They didn't have a discount. So only she had discounts. So those are this great irony and then there was this other one I'll just say one more There is to process and I talked I talked about the research These were things found and said here Michael take them use them in your book. I saw two two Crosses one bigger one smaller and there was a name of one with a last name and a birth date and a death date And then the little one had a death date and a being a man and two men were standing there I'm going. Hmm. What's that? What's that? And suddenly a light went off and I said, oh my god And I said I got to use this I took pictures of it I have a picture I could share all these pictures and he wants to see this stuff There was one story after another in fact She the man she sees along the highways his name is George Ducette and he says to her, you know, you should do this I stopped at a lot of these not just my wife's because they're all this these stories You should do it when I stop at another discount. So I feel connected to my dead wife who was killed here six years ago And so I do this and I go and I stop and I'll sometimes let a candle at somebody else's Roadside Memorial Okay, and I'm not a religious guy, but this was very touching and to see that there was a fetus died at this point and somebody named the fetus and somebody put the things in after this and Then by the way right up one lesson right outside of New Haven there was there was a young girl killed and I modified it and I changed it and I thought and there was one cross that I found that had a Concrete base with a with a with metal coming up and it was fancy and I thought Imagine the father the mother down his workshop Putting this thing together painting the name on Fixing it, you know getting it just perfect bringing it out to digging the hole putting it in having some kind of Memorial service right there along the side of the highway and she talks about this at one point She's there by herself and she starts to build this momentum that I gotta go and I have to see and she's gotta do So she goes down. There's a couple other surprises when she gets down there You know, it's not a mystery novel, but it's the mystery of the heart and of people in the world I don't know I Don't I know I I hope it's not too Obviously religious, but it isn't Yeah, I mean I will give the editor many of these crosses, okay These pictures as crosses that I took because they're just you know, some are just you know heartbreaking and wonderful run wonderfully Evocative, you know I mean, there were a couple that were just sort of you know stones piled on top of stones There was one I saw in Virginia It was right after an overpass and Somebody literally took a couple of branches that they got out of the woods and took a scarf Wrapped it around this way in this way Tried to dig a hole and then and they really there was no hole They just put stones around and it was like this and they'd been there forever. It seemed you know others are really fancy You know others are incredibly fancy But I mean I would just sort of you know challenge you to just stop at one or two and you'll see these stories You know some are kind of plain, but others tell whole stories, you know, who puts stuff goodbye daddy, you know, blah blah blah And it's you know, it's it's it could be modeling of course, you know Like Grey's Elegy, but it I hope I hope my book is not modern, but there's a great deal of genuine pathos there You'll see a collection of stuffed animals, and well, it's I live in a neighborhood. It's mostly and they have the tall glass candles that have Images on them and You don't get a story, but it's it's like it's like the same thing But I don't know how did you just invent the story around the cross? Well, well, if you look I saw many that they tell story another example in Kansas There were four crosses all together and there were two bigger ones and two smaller ones I could show the pictures and that one bigger one one smaller one had the same name one bigger one smaller one had the same name There were two brothers and two brothers So four kids were killed at this one spot here and I looked it up and I looked up the the accident You know just you get a search. I had the names. I did search and yes, they were they got hit by truck Yeah, sometimes sometimes you'll just see teddy bears or some kind of small thing You know most that I've seen that I stopped that had a cross at some kind of cross sophisticated or rudimentary, but some kind of cross One more question What did I tie it's called resting places? which is the Spanish for it's the English for discounts


Hi, so please introduce yourself. My name is Sergei Nestimitiam, founder of Excite. Excite is a multiplayer AR adventures platform connecting metaverse experiences with real-world scenarios. And what do you show here? That's the Excite app. You can see what's available through the camera app. You can see holograms on top of the cafeterias in front of the places and on top of the people's head. That's a hologram avatar like in a multiplayer setting. There are different scenarios supported like let's say I go to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert and around the stadium there are album covers. You can collect them and get some tickets for free for the concert. So yeah, it's a multiplayer and it's a platform so anybody else can create adventures on our platform for businesses, for personal use cases or if you have a passion about some type of sport or something like that. So actually it's like Pokemon Go but actually useful. Yes, exactly. In this dimension you can communicate with the world through camera with businesses through gamified scenarios and it's not only useful but it's also a multiplayer one. Multiplayer on the cloud, just in your app. Is it like an app that you can sell to other brands and they can use the technology behind for their events and everything? Yes, yes. Other businesses can create an adventure on our platform and engage their audience like adding digital sort of slice, digital layer onto this world. So we don't believe in a metaverse like some virtual realm where we live in as a shiny avatar so instead we believe that the main slice, the main sort of level of the metaverse is this world because everyone has digital information about them, every object has digital information and with X-Site we can communicate with this digital information in this world through the camera in a gamified way. On your video it looks very precise everything. In the app is it going to be that? How does it know that this person needs to have this thing on top? Oh you need to have an app and you enable. Well every person needs to be part of the app? Yes, yes. You will only see the hologram for people who enter the same game as you and you sort of you know how in the game like in Fortnite you have something on top of your character like an avatar on top of your character. So this avatar says your name or you know YouTube link whatever there is. That's the same an avatar for the person inside a game. So yes all the holograms for people they have to be enabled and yes we recognize people on every single frame and the good thing you know what we don't use facial recognition. Instead we recognize people with our algorithm which is called onion recognition layer by layer starting from location followed by the style of your t-shirt, style of your shoes and many other sort of visual characteristics excluding your face. Does it work? Yes. Because this is like it looks totally like the upload TV show or something. It looks like but how good does it look in real life? Let's see. Now I'm getting used to it. You have the app? Yes, yes absolutely it's live. And then your colleague is on it? I think so, yes let me show you. You see the hologram? It appears it's an empty profile right now we have plenty of profiles and I can add him to my team or I can so I say he's a business co-founder and you see there are holograms on the street like you can walk around the conference and collect some of them and you can message him and say hi Dima like how are you doing and things like that. And also there are many many other sort of mini games like this is a build your unicorn team adventure, draw something if you want to find some food and drinks and things like that so they should appear, yeah. Is he in the game too or you just add anyone? No we just talked and they downloaded the app and enabled this to be able to recognize you. Really? Yeah. Do you need to know where the phones are? Yes. Geolocation everybody's sharing their positions? Yes, yes until you turn it off. Do they have outdoors or inside? Yeah that's a good point. We actually run a conference pilot and some of those conferences was underground so that didn't work at all well for us. Can you use some kind of Wi-Fi and stuff indoor GP like they use Bluetooth location stuff? Yes it's possible but we don't use it. Right now we use GPS and we track where the camera is looking and we sort of you can think of like what would be that point in the space if you solve some trigonometry and plus we recognize people and their sort of identity on each single frame like through machine learning on the edge like we don't send the images to the cloud to recognize it we recognize it on the device. You could maybe add the conference what you call it like indoor navigation or what you call it interacting and stuff like that. Like matchmaking? Yeah matchmaking. Exactly you can point the camera to me or to anybody else here and send me a message and we can start chatting on X-Side as well. Even singles evenings. Exactly that's one of the adventures that can be created on our platform. So what we decided we don't want to spread too much between use cases we just concentrated on gaming and being a platform so that singles or dating or conferences or anybody else they can create whatever they want and whatever solves their business problem and we will help them. We will allow this sort of you know like a lens which you can use to enter this dimension. And you can switch to a different mode when you are close to a specific event and then you have this activated only when you're there. Certain adventures are global and certain other certain adventures for example there is an adventure for this conference to build your unicorn team and pitch your startup. It's only available here previously it was available on the TechCrunch Disrupt in October. So you were where where was the TechCrunch Disrupt in the US? Yeah yeah it was in San Francisco in the US. And what did they think? It was quite successful like we found investors committed for 600,000 out of 1 million that we are raising right now and yeah we came here to finish the round. Are they competitors trying to do something similar? Yes we had a very strong competitor who like I don't want to just call their name but they actually did exactly what we did but with facial recognition and because it's prohibited in European Union and in US they got sued they had to pivot to be a video editing tool and they paid some fines. There are other competitors who do things for cars or like for example a company BlueVision Labs they did absolutely the same but for the car and they got acquired by company Lyft which is a competitor of Uber in the United States. So yes this technology is present on the market but people use it in different ways and we believe that. They try to do it for cars? Yes I mean we can do this for cars as well. So when the Lyft car arrives? Yeah you can point the camera and see which car it is. Which car it is? Yes yes yes. It works already in Lyft? I think they're going to launch this soon. Yes yes they acquired the company but they did not integrate this yet. How about somebody has another app idea and they want to use your technology they can work with you together and do something else or you want to be the app for everybody to use? Absolutely they can create an adventure on our platform or they can contact us how we can help them to integrate with us. So right now the plan is to make the adventure creation as easy as possible so that you can just you know click click click or maybe even send a message to the chatbot and it will create an adventure for you. However there was also an idea that you can embed our SDK inside somebody else's app like in the dating app and then they will see like a nice sort of heart-like pinkish avatars instead of our default avatars. Yeah that is possible that's not sort of right now in production. So you're the founder and CEO and is this your colleague? Yes yes this is Mitra our head of design. Dima our head of design and Alex is my co-founder in Kiev. He is in Kiev in Ukraine and there is another person who is not right now with us. Where do you live? I live in Sydney in Australia for the last five years. I'm Ukrainian and I moved to Sydney like five years ago. Mitra lives here in Spain. In Spain? Yeah. Which one is best Sydney or Spain? Sydney absolutely. Why? The best one is Kiev in Ukraine man. Unfortunately not right now but yeah the best one is Kiev. Kiev more than Sydney. Is it true that Ukrainian guys are the best software engineers in the world? Well that wouldn't be modest and we were you know educated and hardest in a way that like you have to be modest in your life. Because this is pretty hardcore the stuff. Yeah. And you're actually doing this? Yeah. I can tell you. Or do you have a huge team behind you? No that's an interesting part I want to show this to you because that's all deserving that's all because of my team. That's me. I'll turn this. Yeah. Right there. Yeah. And maybe you can also explain a little bit to your background what you did before and stuff like that. Yeah. That's me. My name is Sergei. I worked at Atlassian and I was always passionate about computer vision and here we go like communicating with the world through camera. Alex he built a game dev studio in Ukraine and he is still living in Kiev Ukraine and the people on my team like for example Nikola he works at Google actually right now. We haven't started you know we haven't went into the full-time track he used to help us before Google and Mitra is here. David my brother he is a very proficient machine learning expert worked previously in companies like Reface for example and many others. So yeah we've got quite an international team right now internationally located but however they all are Ukrainians. This guy by the way Alexander Kirillin he's on the front lines protecting Ukraine right now. So yeah yeah he's also Ukraine. Okay. Okay. I hope everybody stays safe. And this finishes so you can focus on technology. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Thanks a lot. This is awesome. I'd like to see more demos on your website on your YouTube channel or the reason you can just download this and start playing with it. Yes. Yes. The app is available. There is a couple of adventures not thousands as I promised but it's coming you know. There are a couple of adventures. It's available on the Play Store and App Store and yeah you can download it and play with it and we can exchange contacts and I can send you more videos. You know how those funny guys who did the Pokemon Go that kind of team and the way they launched as far as I understand it's just some kind of AI that just added a bunch of Pokemon all over the world. They didn't have to manually go and start adventures. Yeah. Could you do something like that where it just works all over the world? It's already thousands of crypto coins like coins that are going to be transferred into crypto already on the streets of Barcelona and Europe and the United States. So we did this. However, what they had is a very expensive franchise like a Pokemon. They also own Harry Potter franchise for gaming. You don't need that. I mean yes and no. So when it gets to collect something it kind of resonated very well with Pokemon. You know you collected Pokemon in the original scenario so yeah it resonated well. However, we will go with just many custom adventures instead of like one big franchise. And then a customer needs to pay to make an adventure? Yeah. As I told you before general public can create adventures for free and then if you're passionate about soccer that's free, create an adventure all good but if you can create more sophisticated adventure and charge for that. I take a card, Excite takes a card and then if a business wants to create an adventure they have to assign coin value into three-dimensional objects and they have to buy those coins from us. That's how we charge businesses into B2B but not as an advertisement so we are not targeting this to particular users instead we allow those businesses to sort of engage with their audience in a new way like through the camera. So you're using crypto also? Yes. Yes. It's a Web3 powered startup. Yes, yes, yes. But you could do stuff without the crypto? If people want not to use crypto or everything is crypto? I mean, yeah obviously like those games for businesses they don't have to be crypto and they can be like just a virtual sort of currency within the app. Like for example if you want to create an adventure you just pay certain amount of money you get those like number of objects that you can use in your app.  But if you are a McDonald's you want to attract maybe 100,000 people or you know make them more happy about your products so you're gonna pay more because of like wider scale of such adventure. Cool. Thanks a lot. Thank you.


Mark Schwab, I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. Today we're going to talk with Arsind Tavadyan, an attorney who has come across the sea from Armenia to Hawaii. Arsind is a partner in the Turtaqian Law Firm and an associate professor at Yadavan State University in Yadavan, Armenia. I've asked Arsind to help us discover Armenia. Okay, welcome Arsind, it's good to see you. How are you? Aloha friends, aloha Mark. Thank you, fine. I'm enjoying my time in Hawaii in O'ahu. Let me ask you, first of all, why are you?  And then I want to ask you a little bit about your practice. And then I want to ask you to help us discover Armenia. But first of all, why did you come to Hawaii? What purpose, what are you, why are you here? Yeah, thank you. So there is this program by the Department of State of U.S., which is called Professional Fellows, PFP, The Abbreviation. The intention of this program is to bring young professionals from basically the former USSR countries to the corresponding institutions in U.S. And to present basically how the U.S. works. So I was sent to, I participated in this program and was chosen to come here. And my host organization in Hawaii is the Supreme Court of Hawaii. And my host here is Associate Justice Todedens, who is a great host and tells me a lot. And we speak a lot, we discuss a lot of issues. So that's how I ended up here. Oh, that sounds like a great program.  And what is your practice like? What kind of practice do you have? Yeah, thank you. I am mainly dealing with business law issues and contracts, civil law, tax issues, administration. And my practice is corresponding with the major branches of Armenian economy. For example, we have wine producing, we have mining, we have IT. So my practice, I'm dealing mainly with mining, again, wine producing, agriculture and IT. Well, I mean, that is actually, I've already learned a lot about Armenia, I didn't know. But let me ask you, I mean, what can you tell us about Armenia? How can we discover more about Armenia? Is there an English translation of the name Armenia and where is Armenia? Okay, so the term Armenia is not translated actually. So if you are speaking about Armenia, there is this historical Armenia, which has very complicated and long history, which goes back to a couple of millennials before Christ. So we don't want to dive into that subject. It will take many, many lectures. But modern Armenia can regain its independence after the collapse of Soviet Union in the 1991. And it is a small country situated in a region which is often called southern Caucasus or Trans-Caucasus or generally Caucasus. Sometimes Armenia is included in the greater Middle East. But usually it is called, this region is usually called Caucasus. So it's a mountainous region and Armenia is a small country, which is basically situated in the mountains. We have a lot of mountains. I think 85% of our territory are mountains. We don't have access to sea, we are a landlocked country. Only 3 million population there and Yerevan is the capital of Armenia. It's I think 1,200,000 people reside there. And that's the general information about Armenia. We have neighbors, as you see. We have four bordering countries, Azerbaijan on the east, Turkey on the west, Georgia on the north, and Iran on the south. Yeah, I would like to dive into that in a minute, but I also want to take a look at that first map that was put up, that first map. You know, do Armenians consider themselves part of Africa, part of Europe, part of Asia or all of the above? What can you tell us? But when I see Armenians right in the middle of everything. Yeah, actually it's a very, very interesting question because this region, as I told you, sometimes it is included as a part of Eastern Europe. Sometimes it is considered Asia, sometimes greater Middle East. Certainly not Africa because Africa is quite far from us. Armenian culture as, so it includes a lot of features of European, actually Mediterranean or South European culture, a lot of features of Middle Eastern. And actually, as we were part of Soviet Union for 70 years, we have a lot of things that are coming from this Soviet culture. I can state like that. So it's very hard to set to tell which continent Armenia belongs to, especially when you consider that Europeans or Asians, again, they are very divided and very diverse. For example, East Asia and West Asia, they are completely different than South Europe and North Europe, they are again completely different. But Armenia has features of Mediterranean culture, of Middle Eastern culture, of Russian culture, of even French culture because we have a lot of French Armenian connections. There we have Armenians as a nation have all these things and we are very diverse but united. Okay, well, that is a nice comment about your country. Diverse but united, that's great. And so there is many different cultures and everybody relates to all of them. Is that correct? We all have the features of all cultures, but we also have our unique culture there which we are a nation, we are living in this region for many thousands of years and we have developed our own culture which also has features and similarities with our neighboring countries and countries a little bit far from Armenia. Okay, well, let's take a look at the second map that came up, it's a little bit simpler and you mentioned four countries around you and what are the relationships with those neighboring countries and Armenia? I mean, we've heard a lot about Turkey, quite recently in Iran. Georgia we have not heard, Azerbaijan we've heard about but what's the relationship between your country and these other neighboring countries? Okay, so again, this is a very big subject and we can dive into history but considering all the peculiarities of our recent 2000 years of history, I just can say that we Armenians have tensions with our Eastern neighbors, with Azerbaijanis and with our Western neighbors, Turkey and these tensions go back to 100 years I think and starting from the Armenian genocide that took place in the beginning of 20th century, we still cannot recover our relations with Turkey and we have a conflict with Azerbaijan for a region which is called Nagorno-Karabakh or Artsakh in Armenian, it's the region that is populated by Armenians but Azerbaijan tries to control it so that's why we do not have good relations unfortunately with our neighbors, with Eastern and Western partners, with Georgians we have very good relations, we are culturally very similar nations, with Iran again we also have good relations and Armenian and Iranian relations go back to thousands of years, yeah. Okay, now you've talked about and I know this is a big subject, can you give me just a kind of a short, maybe that's unfair to ask but a short idea of Armenia's cultural background and how it came into existence as a country historically? Okay, so Armenia is one of the credals of Middle Eastern culture, this when you consider starting the history, starting from the Neolithic period where the people domesticated animals and domesticated crops, Armenia was one of the regions that this happens, so and we have very ancient ancient proto-states here, which are called differently in Hittai sources, our states are called Hayasa, Azzi, in Assyrian sources there are Armenia or Urartu so basically the name of Armenia, this region gained the name of Armenia starting from 6th century BC, but though this term Armenia was Armenia was used with a couple of other terms by Assyrians and Hittites starting from the 3rd century BC, so the first state in the territory of Armenia is called Urartu and it existed starting from the 9th century BC. Some of the sources use Urartu and Armenia as a synonyms, especially there is this Behistun inscription in Iran which was made in the 6th century BC where Urartu and Armenia are used as synonyms and basically the statehood in this territory dates back to the 9th century, so and Armenia was a kingdom starting from the 9th century till the 5th century, 8th AD when we lost our independence then regained it in the 9th century till the 14th century where the kingdom and what is modern day Turkey in Kilikia in the southern Turkey, then a lot of nomad people came, Turks, Mongols, Seljuks and we lost our independence and regained it in the 1918 and we had a very tragic page in our history the Armenian genocide that took place in the beginning of the 20th century and up to one and a half Armenians were massacred by the Ottoman Turks. One and a half million? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. It's a very tragic page in our history and but after that Armenia managed to regain independence in 1980 and in the end of 1920 Soviet army gained so they took control of Armenia and Armenia became one of the founding republics of Union Soviet Socialistic Republics and after the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991 we again regained our independence and we are a republic which has the modern Armenian republic as a history of 32 years starting from 1991. So the Turkish massacre of Armenians is what still brings a division between those your two countries and that continues until this day the historical background from that, is that right? Is that correct? Yes, yes, yes. And I want to state that Turkey still denies the fact of these massacres. It calls this genocide as a tragic event but does not want to face with the facts there but majority of countries in the world has recognized this fact as a genocide. US, Russia, France, I think Germany has recognized the fact that in the beginning of 20th century up to one and a half Armenians were massacred by the Turkish authorities. Wow, and that is an issue that is unresolved. Yeah, to this day. I see, it continues. Now, I mean, the history of Armenia as you've described it, I mean, it's freedom and then someone takes over. Yeah. Freedom, then someone takes over and including the Soviet Union. Now, what is the relationship now? I mean, now we're involved with Ukraine and is that an issue for Armenia? What is Armenia's relationship with Russia now? And is there a concern? What is the position of Armenia with respect to Ukraine? So that's kind of two questions. Armenia, so we have our own conflict in Armenia as I've told you, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And it's the main thing that we are now trying to resolve. Of course, Ukraine conflict is a tragedy for Armenians because we considers ourselves both as a nation which are very close both to Russians and to Ukrainians historically. Okay. We as a nation want these two countries to find the peace amongst themselves. But again, one of the major issue in Armenia is a conflict, a very, very bloody conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan which is continuing started from 1988 and the latest, so it's now a conflict that it's not in an active phase but the latest active clashes were there and it took place in 2020 where it's, and when we lost up to 4,000 victims there. And so we have our own conflict which we try to resolve hoping again that we will find peace with our neighbors and hoping that again, the peace with our neighboring nations will occur and Ukraine and Russia could reach to peace agreement bit amongst themselves. So I hear you telling me that there are current problems currently existing Armenia that things are not always peaceful. Yes. There are some problems that still exist after all these years and Armenia is still trying to deal with them. Can you tell me what kind of a government you have in Armenia, what's it like? Maybe give us some comparison with other countries including the United States. So actually we have a parliamentary system. It means that we choose only the MPs, the members of the parliament and Armenia, the government system of Armenia is very likely to Germany, Italy, England, the United Kingdom. Of course, we don't have a queen or queen but we elect a parliament and parliament appoints a prime minister. We have a president which is again elected by the parliament but president is a nominally head of state and it doesn't have any authority and is very similar to UK United Kingdom's queen which is a nominal state of state without any authorities. Yeah, if you know about the government system in Germany you will, it will be very easy for you to understand how the government of Armenia works. So it's the parliament has the power. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the parliament has the power. And the prime minister, is that a powerful position or is that, oh, I see. Yeah, because the prime minister is usually a person who is the leader of the party who holds the majority in the parliament. So basically a prime minister is a person who is the head of the government, the euro and the fact of the head of the parliamentary majority. So it's quite a powerful figure there. Okay, and the people get to choose the power. And so it's a democratic as we would consider in America, a democratic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we are very proud of that because if you look through all the, there are a lot of reports and ratings about the democracy, democracy index, anti-corruption index and Armenia is one of the leader in this region. Of course we have many problems as a new emerging democracy, but I can proudly say that we do not have autocratic regime. Armenia's government is appointed and chosen through elections. Though I have some criticism about our governmental system, and I'm not fond of our current government, but as you see, I'm not speaking with you behind the jars. So I will go back to Armenia and will freely continue to criticize my government as I usually do. So we are very proud of that. Of course we try to develop our democracy because I think that it's one of the major things for a new country for emerging country. And unfortunately our neighbors usually tends to go to limiting of the democratic values. For example, our neighboring Azerbaijan is a country which is actually the family dictatorship where the post of the president goes by heritage from father to son. So we don't have that thing in Armenia and I am very proud of that. And what I hear you also saying is that it sounds like you have freedom of speech and you're not afraid to talk and you're not afraid to criticize or and in light of all the problems that you've expressed about Armenia facing, it sounds a little hopeful at least in this country is something that provides hope for you. Yes, yeah, again, we have a lot of free speech and there is this democracy index and I think Armenia is again ahead of many countries in Europe by the index of freedom speech. Of course I would like to have more quality freedom of speech because in the era of social media, criticism is usually tweets in social media with only 140 symbols and just a criticism for criticism without any content. I would really like to have more professional media but I think that is a problem which occurs in all the countries now because of the social media. Yeah, that is something that we're all encountering everywhere. Now, tell me a little bit, what is your legal system like? Can you give me some description of what it's like and maybe compare it to America and similarities and differences? We are which you Americans call civil law country. We have a civil code and a major source of Armenian law is a statute law, not precedent law as in U.S. or United Kingdom. So basically there are two major branches of legal systems. One is the Anglo-American or common law system. The other one is European or civil law system. So we have a separate civil code which is the major source of the regulation of civil actions and our civil code is designed in taking as a, so it's designed taking into account the German structure, the structure of German code, which is usually the lawyers call it Pandex system. So our civil code is Pandex. So by the structure, it is more similar to German civil code, the Bourg-Larische Gesetzbuch but by the regulation, by the context, it is sometimes more closer to the French civil code. So again, we are a civil law country and our civil code by the structure is similar to German one, but by the content is sometimes similar to the French civil code. Okay, and you, I mean, your sponsor is a Supreme Court Justice of the state of Hawaii. Do you have a Supreme Court or do you have court system and if a court rules a certain way, is that a precedent that controls? Yeah, so our precedent low and generally in Europe the precedents are not so powerful as in US but they have some authority. We don't have a Supreme Court as US does because in majority of European countries the constitutional justice is not conducted by the same court as conducts the general or the usual cases. So in Europe, you can find usually a separate constitutional court. So in Armenia, we also have the general jurisdiction or the courts that deal with all issues related to relations with the private actor or private actors in the state and there is a separate constitutional court which deals with the issues of laws and says if the corresponding law is in accordance with the constitution. So if a judge dealing with the case finds that certain law contradicts the constitution the judge cannot apply the constitution directly. The judge must apply to the constitutional court and ask if the certain law contradicts the constitution or not. So this is the major difference that you can find not only in Armenia, but in all the countries of Europe. Okay, and if I wanted to sue somebody in a breach of contract, I could go to court in Armenia. Yes. Now, you mentioned also the wine industry. I didn't know wine was a big thing in Armenia. Is that a big business? It's a big and it's getting bigger. And actually the oldest winery in the world which is 8,000 years old was found in Armenia. Wow. Yeah, yeah, the oldest winery and we are proud of our wine industry. We have not only wine we have also a cognac production or brandy production. So we have spirits made of wine and also wine, spirits made of grapes and also wine. And I think Armenian wines are good and they are getting better. So we invite you to Armenia and we can have a glass of wine in your event. That sounds like a good idea. I'd like to do that. And is there a tourist industry in Armenia too? I mean, is that big? Not as big as in Hawaii, but it's getting bigger. So we have 1,600,000 tourists per year. Not as 10 millions in Hawaii. And okay, we have just a couple minutes left. Is there, you've been here for a while. Is there any, do you see anything in Hawaii that reminds you of Armenia or that we share any feelings about that? I think it's unusual but some things are very similar. The thing that Hawaii is very small and Armenia is also very small. That means that personal connections are very expensive here. The people are very nice as in Armenia. There you are open-minded. And I think the Hawaiians are very, very honest, very hospitable and very kind people. I think I've never seen such a level of kindness in any state and in any country. I think that in this case we have some similarities. And one more thing, Armenia is a mountainous country and we do not have agricultural land and a lot of things are imported to Armenia. And that's the thing that economically unites Armenia and Hawaii. Well, thank you for giving us a start on discovery of Armenia. And as we closed out this session, are there any, Armenia has gone through a lot of difficult times that you've touched on and it still is, still has some problem that it deals with daily. Are there any words of wisdom or philosophy in Armenian culture that you would like to leave us with? I don't know about, I can't remember anything specifically Armenian, but I should say that if you work hard and believe that you can succeed, you will succeed. Okay, that's very good. Thank you very much, Arsene Tavadyan. I appreciate you being our guest today and giving us a touch of Armenia. Aloha. Aloha mahalo. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.