Oblique Strategies – A Deck of Cards to Shake You Up
Oblique Strategies is a deck of printed cards in a black box, created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt and first published in 1975. Each card offers an aphorism intended to help artists break creative blocks.
https://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/OSintro.html
You can buy them here for £30 – https://enoshop.co.uk/shop/oblique/
Or, of course the FREE iPhone App – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oblique-strategies-cards/id495669106?mt=8
Or here is a list of the Complete Fourth Edition:
- Abandon desire
- Abandon normal instructions
- Accept advice
- Adding on
- A line has two sides
- Always the first steps
- Ask people to work against their better judgement
- Ask your body
- Be dirty
- Be extravagant
- Be less critical
- Breathe more deeply
- Bridges -build -burn
- Change ambiguities to specifics
- Change nothing and continue consistently
- Change specifics to ambiguities
- Consider transitions
- Courage!
- Cut a vital connection
- Decorate, decorate
- Destroy nothing; Destroy the most important thing
- Discard an axiom
- Disciplined self-indulgence
- Discover your formulas and abandon them
- Display your talent
- Distort time
- Do nothing for as long as possible
- Don’t avoid what is easy
- Don’t break the silence
- Don’t stress one thing more than another
- Do something boring
- Do something sudden, destructive and unpredictable
- Do the last thing first
- Do the words need changing?
- Emphasize differences
- Emphasize the flaws
- Faced with a choice, do both (from Dieter Rot)
- Find a safe part and use it as an anchor
- Give the game away
- Give way to your worst impulse
- Go outside. Shut the door.
- Go to an extreme, come part way back
- How would someone else do it?
- How would you have done it?
- In total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly
- Is it finished?
- Is something missing?
- Is the style right?
- It is simply a matter or work
- Just carry on
- Listen to the quiet voice
- Look at the order in which you do things
- Magnify the most difficult details
- Make it more sensual
- Make what’s perfect more human
- Move towards the unimportant
- Not building a wall; making a brick
- Once the search has begun, something will be found
- Only a part, not the whole
- Only one element of each kind
- Openly resist change
- Pae White’s non-blank graphic metacard
- Question the heroic
- Remember quiet evenings
- Remove a restriction
- Repetition is a form of change
- Retrace your steps
- Reverse
- Simple Subtraction
- Slow preparation, fast execution
- State the problem as clearly as possible
- Take a break
- Take away the important parts
- The inconsistency principle
- The most easily forgotten thing is the most important
- Think – inside the work -outside the work
- Tidy up
- Try faking it (from Stewart Brand)
- Turn it upside down
- Use an old idea
- Use cliches
- Use filters
- Use something nearby as a model
- Use ‘unqualified’ people
- Use your own ideas
- Voice your suspicions
- Water
- What context would look right?
- What is the simplest solution?
- What mistakes did you make last time?
- What to increase? What to reduce? What to maintain?
- What were you really thinking about just now?
- What wouldn’t you do?
- What would your closest friend do?
- When is it for?
- Where is the edge?
- Which parts can be grouped?
- Work at a different speed
- Would anyone want it?
- Your mistake was a hidden intention
- Use fewer notes
- Use filters
- Use ‘unqualified’ people
- Water
- What are you really thinking about just now? Incorporate
- What is the reality of the situation?
- What mistakes did you make last time?
- What would your closest friend do?
- What wouldn’t you do?
- Work at a different speed
- You are an engineer
- You can only make one dot at a time
- You don’t have to be ashamed of using your own ideas