New music: Listen to Laura Marling’s album ‘Once I Was An Eagle’

Laura Marling performing live on BBC Two, 23 April 2013. (via YouTube)

Music fans can listen to Laura Marling’s fourth album, Once I Was An Eagle, ahead of its release next Monday.

For a limited time, all 16 tracks are being streamed for free. Head on over to Guardian Music or listen here using the SoundCloud widget. The recent single ‘Once’, below, is a brief taster.

‘Once I Was An Eagle’ is out 27 May in the UK (Amazon) and 28 May in the US (iTunes).

Jay Silver’s TED talk: Hack a banana, make a keyboard!

Jay Silver, exuberant inventor, entertains the TED Salon audience with ketchup, pizza, bananas and other seemingly absurd but infinitely fun computer interfaces and game controllers.

(via TED)

‘The Plateau Effect’ is a powerful law of nature that affects everyone

In a nutshell:

We succeed, and then we get stuck.

‘The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success’ (Amazon, Foyles) is an intriguing look at why people in all kinds of pursuits will succeed to a point and then be unable to improve. Book co-author Bob Sullivan explains.

Il Sole 24 Ore ‘Business Class’ ad

Illustrator and editorial designer Francesco Muzzi’s flowing composition lends the above twenty-second advert for Italy’s leading financial newspaper, Il Sole 24 Ore, a playful ingenuity.

(via Francesco Franchi)

How to make a Dadaist poem

Excerpt from Mick Gold’s Europe After The Rain, 1978, Arts Council of Great Britain — an in-depth, if somewhat curious documentary of the work of the leading exponents of Dada and Surrealism.

See for yourself here.

Two months breaking ice: A time-lapse journey through Ross Sea, Antarctica

Cassandra Brooks, a marine scientist currently blogging from the icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer in Antarctica’s Ross Sea, condenses her incredible two-month experience into five mesmerising minutes.

Sonic Water

(via Creative Applications Network)

The Situationists: A short documentary (1989)

Introduction to the activities of agit-art movement Situationist International.

Watch Part I (above), Part II and Part III.

Paul Sharits’ hypnotic ‘flicker’ films

Image from Razor Blades, 1965-1968 (…)

Ground-breaking abstract light, image, text and colour play by avant-garde filmmaker Paul Sharits (1943–1993).

Shutter Interface, 1975

Installation with four looped 16mm films
Colour, sound
Paul Sharits

Ray Gun Virus, 1966

16mm film, colour
14 minutes
Paul Sharits

T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G, 1968

16mm film, colour
12 minutes, sound
Paul Sharits

Also: Piece Mandala/End War (1966); Word Movie — Fluxfilm 29 (1966); N:O:T:H:I:N:G (1968); Bad Burns (1982); Dots 1 & 2, (1966); Sound Strip/ Film Strip, (1971–1972); Dream Displacement (1976); Tails (1976); and more.

Apodemy

Stunning.

(via Katerina Athanasopoulou)

Jessica Oreck’s Mysteries of Vernacular — animated stories about words

TED-Ed has announced that it will add Jessica Oreck’s etymological mini-series, Mysteries of Vernacular, to its online video library over the next months. As Jessica plans to create 26 lessons — one for each letter of the alphabet, bringing stories of everyday words to life using paper cutouts and stop-motion animation — this is wonderful news.

Watch latest installments.

(via Jessica Oreck and TED-Ed blog)

Password Politics: What happens when you enter your password online in front of strangers

(via John Fass)