Updated November 2016 after Netflix acquired the film - clip added, post expanded with details from interviews that followed the theatrical run.

Tonight I attended a festive pre-release screening of "Presenting Princess Shaw" at the Petach Tikva Museum of Art cinematheque.

Remember when I wrote about Thru You Too a year ago and mentioned Princess Shaw? There's a documentary. And it's extraordinary.

The film was first screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival in July, followed by its international premiere at Toronto in September. Tonight was a festive pre-theatrical release screening. Writer and director Ido Haar was there to introduce it and take questions.

The Setup

Ido Haar is a longtime friend of Kutiman. His previous films include 9 Star Hotel (2006), about Palestinians working illegally as construction workers in Israel, which was nominated for a European Film Award.

Update: I've added the new album to thru-you.org - downloads, metadata, and links to all the original source videos.

Another update: more details and links.

Last month Kutiman released a remix project for Thru You Too: ten international producers, each interpreting his YouTube mashups through their own lens. The project launched with its own website and spans cumbia, dub, house, hip-hop, dark disco, future jazz, and more.

The concept is recursive in the best way. Kutiman found strangers on YouTube and stitched them into songs. Now other producers are taking those songs and making them into something else entirely. A remix of a remix of found footage.

"I'm New" (Thru You)

Copia Doble Systema (Global Bass / Cumbia) - Norwegian DJ Copyflex started this project in Copenhagen in 2009. They call it "cumbia vikingo." High-energy tropical bass with syncopated percussion and digital brass stabs. Supported by Diplo, Gilles Peterson. Listen here.

Update: I've added the new album to thru-you.org - downloads, metadata, and links to all the original source videos.

Five and a half years ago, Kutiman blew my mind. Today he did it again.

Thru You Too dropped today. Six new tracks, same magic: unrelated YouTube videos of people playing music in their bedrooms, practice rooms, garages. People who never met. Kutiman found them, cut them, stitched them together into something larger than its parts.

He told Yahoo why it took five years:

It took me a few years to get back to the point where ... I'm doing it freely. From an honest place where I'm not trying to bring the next thing, and just do it for fun.

The first single, "Give It Up", dropped on YouTube September 12 and hit a million views in days.

The vocalist is an aspiring singer from New Orleans who goes by the name KarMaRedd or "Princess Shaw". Her videos barely break a hundred views. The day after the single dropped, she posted a thank-you video. Someone had emailed her: did you hear the remix of your song? She didn't even know how to pronounce Kutiman's name. "It was so surreal," she says. "Almost in tears."

"No One In This World" followed, published about a week ago.

The remaining four tracks + companion website (thru-you-too.com) launched today.
The full playlist is here.

Six female vocalists anchor this album - R&B, soul, groove. Warmer sound than the original Thru You.

My grandparents enjoying their great-grandchildren #throughglass.
I may have to get an extra pair...

You are a pioneer, a founder and an architect of what's possible.
You are a Glass Explorer. We have an exciting journey ahead of us,
and what happens next starts with you.

Start exploring at google.com/glass

I can't remember the last time I had to RTFM before figuring out how *turn on* a gadget I purchased.

I wanted it. And that's the first thing I was planning to do with it...

The Mathematics Of Murder: Should A Robot Sacrifice Your Life To Save Two? is a thought provoking article regarding robot ethics in the age of autonomous cars and weapon systems.

It happens quickly-more quickly than you, being human, can fully process.

A front tire blows, and your autonomous SUV swerves. But rather than veering left, into the opposing lane of traffic, the robotic vehicle steers right. Brakes engage, the system tries to correct itself, but there's too much momentum. Like a cornball stunt in a bad action movie, you are over the cliff, in free fall.

Your robot, the one you paid good money for, has chosen to kill you. Better that, its collision-response algorithms decided, than a high-speed, head-on collision with a smaller, non-robotic compact. There were two people in that car, to your one. The math couldn't be simpler.

I usually hear about the safety aspects of driveless cars. After all, people don't like being killed by robots. Another intersting angle is ownership: what if I can pay for a car with a safety algorithm that prioritzes me, the owner, and my loved ones?