learningIT

From the Drawn! blog:

Oblique Strategies is a deck of cards created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt after thinking about approaches to their own work as artist and musician. Each card presents a question, dilemma, or new way of attacking the work you are doing as an artist. By drawing a card, you are given the chance to rethink your process.

Sample cards include:

• Don’t avoid what is easy.
• Humanize something that is free of error.
• What do you do? Now, what do you do best?
• Do the last thing first.
• Use an unacceptable colour.

There is also a Mac widget for the cards here.

About Oblique
Are you a musician/producer having a blank in the studio? Are you a writer with a sudden writer’s block? Are you an artist staring at a blank canvas? Are you a creative looking at an empty screen?

In comes Oblique — a widget implementation of the famous “Oblique Strategies” card decks from Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. It features the complete sets of the Original (1975), the Second (1978) and Third (1979) Editions, as well as the elusive, commercially not-available Fourth set (1996) by Brian Eno and Peter Norton. Selection of the Editions is user-controllable via a preferences panel. The timing for the Auto-Flipback feature is accessible via the preferences panel as well.

The use of Oblique is very simple and straightforward, with the aphorisms presented in a non-obtrusive way.