“Hon­or thy error as a hid­den inten­tion.” “Work at a dif­fer­ent speed.” “Try fak­ing it!” These sug­ges­tions will sound famil­iar to every­one who’s ever flipped through the deck of cards known as Oblique Strate­gies. You can now do that dig­i­tal­ly, of course, but Oblique Strate­gies remains an essen­tial­ly phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence, one whose shuf­fling and draw­ing reminds the user that they’re draw­ing from the well of chance for a way to break them through a cre­ative impasse or just rethink part of a project. It also began as thor­ough­ly a phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence, invent­ed by pro­duc­er-artist-ambi­ent musi­cian Bri­an Eno and painter Peter Schmidt, who first came up with them in the pre-dig­i­tal days of 1974.

Back then, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Mar­tin Schnei­der, the con­cept for Eno and Schmidt’s “set of 115 cards with ellip­ti­cal imper­a­tives designed to spark in the user cre­ative con­nec­tions unob­tain­able through reg­u­lar modes of work” emerged as a form of “rad­i­cal inter­ven­tion with roots in East­ern phi­los­o­phy.”

Hav­ing first come on the mar­ket in the 1970s, Oblique Strate­gies has gone through sev­er­al dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tion runs, usu­al­ly pack­aged in hand­some box­es with the deck­’s name embla­zoned in gold. “The first four edi­tions are out of print and collector’s items (and priced to match). The 5th edi­tion is cur­rent­ly avail­able from Eno’s web­site for £30 (about $50). In 2013 a lim­it­ed 6th edi­tion of 500 num­bered sets were avail­able but quick­ly sold out.” At this moment, you can find one import­ed set on Ama­zon.

But it seems that the very first set of Oblique Strate­gies, fea­tured in Schnei­der’s post, is unavail­able at any price. Writ­ten in Eno’s own hand, some­times cur­sive and some­times block, on cards with a wood­en-look­ing tex­ture and with­out the round­ed cor­ners that char­ac­ter­ize the com­mer­cial ver­sion, these first Oblique Strate­gies include “Don’t be fright­ened to dis­play your tal­ents,” “If a thing can be said, it can be said sim­ply,” and “Do we need holes?” Those who have fol­lowed Eno’s work will sure­ly appre­ci­ate in par­tic­u­lar the card that says to “use non-musi­cians,” “non-musi­cian” being one of Eno’s pre­ferred titles for him­self, espe­cial­ly when work­ing in a musi­cal capac­i­ty. The total pack­age of Oblique Strate­gies may have grown more refined over the years, but this hand­made first set does have a cer­tain imme­di­a­cy, and also, in a sense, the impri­matur of his­to­ry: after all, they worked for Bri­an Eno.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies” Deck of Cards (1975)

How Jim Jar­musch Gets Cre­ative Ideas from William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method and Bri­an Eno’s Oblique Strate­gies

Mar­shall McLuhan’s 1969 Deck of Cards, Designed For Out-of-the-Box Think­ing

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

When we first checked in with artist and screen­writer Todd Alcott, he was immor­tal­iz­ing the work of stars who hit their stride in the 70s and 80s, as high­ly con­vinc­ing pulp nov­el and mag­a­zine cov­ers inspired by their most famous songs and lyrics. David Bowie’s “Young Amer­i­cans” yields an East of Eden-like blonde cou­ple reclin­ing in the grass. Talk­ing Heads’ “Life Dur­ing Wartime” becomes an erot­i­cal­ly vio­lent, or vio­lent­ly erot­ic, mag­a­zine that ain’t fool­ing around.

Next, we took a look at Alcott’s series of pulp cov­ers drawn from the work of Mr. Bob Dylan, bona fide god­fa­ther of clas­sic rock, a peri­od that gets a lion’s share of cov­ers in Alcott’s imag­i­na­tive Etsy rack, along­side oth­er new wave and punk bands like The Clash, The Smiths, and Joy Divi­sion. Look­ing at these devot­ed trib­utes to musi­cal giants of yore, ren­dered in ador­ing trib­utes to an even ear­li­er era’s aes­thet­ic, pro­duces the kind of “of course!” reac­tion that makes Alcott’s work so enjoy­able.

After all, pulp mag­a­zines and books are per­haps as respon­si­ble for the coun­ter­cul­ture as LSD, with their proud­ly sexy pos­es, over­heat­ed teen fan­tasies, and bondage gear. (Prince gets his own series, a true joy.) But Alcott has moved on to a crop of artists who first appeared in the 90s class of alter­na­tive bands—from PJ Har­vey, to Fiona Apple, to Nir­vana, to Neu­tral Milk Hotel, to, as you can see here, Radio­head, the most long-lived and inno­v­a­tive stars of the era.

How well does Alcot­t’s approach work with artists who hit the scene when pulp fic­tion turned into Pulp Fic­tion, appro­pri­at­ed in a wink­ing, exple­tive-filled splat­ter-fest that didn’t, tech­ni­cal­ly, require its audi­ence to know any­thing about pulp fic­tion? You’ll notice that Alcott has tak­en a nov­el approach to the con­cept in many cas­es (reimag­in­ing PJ Harvey’s “This is Love!” as a 50s grind­house flick, anoth­er genre that has been heav­i­ly Taran­ti­no-ized).

He con­verts Radiohead’s “Kid A” into that most trea­sured pub­li­ca­tion for futon-surf­ing hip­sters cir­ca 2000, the IKEA cat­a­log. “Video­tape” man­i­fests in lit­er­al fash­ion as one of the oughties’ many objects of con­sumer elec­tron­ics nos­tal­gia, the 120-minute VHS. And “Myx­o­mato­sis,” from 2003’s Hail to the Thief, appears as a 1970s cat book, an arti­fact many Radio­head fans at the turn of the mil­len­ni­um might trea­sure as both an iron­ic Tum­blr goof and a poignant reminder of child­hood.

The Radio­head series does not ful­ly aban­don the pulp look—“Karma Police,” for exam­ple, gets the detec­tive mag­a­zine treat­ment. But it does lean more heav­i­ly on lat­er-20th cen­tu­ry pro­duc­tions, like the 70s sci-fi cov­er of “Para­noid Android,” clear­ly inspired by Michael Crichton’s West­world. Moon-Shaped Pool’s “Burn the Witch,” on the oth­er hand, looks like a clas­sic 50s Ham­mer Hor­ror poster, but with a nod to Robin Hardy’s 1973 Wick­er Man. (Both Crich­ton and Hardy have like­wise been re-imag­ined for audi­ences who may nev­er have seen the orig­i­nals.)

Per­haps the least inter­est­ing of Alcott’s riffs on the Radio­head cat­a­log, “Jig­saw Falling into Place,” goes right for the obvi­ous, though its idyl­lic, Bob Ross-like scene strikes a dis­so­nant chord in illus­trat­ing a song that ref­er­ences closed cir­cuit cam­eras and sawn-off shot­guns. Speak­ing of obvi­ous, maybe it seemed too on the nose to turn “Creep” into creepy pulp erot­i­ca. Still, I won­der how Alcott resist­ed. View and pur­chase in hand­made print form all of Alcott’s songs-as-book cov­ers, etc. at Etsy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Songs by David Bowie, Elvis Costel­lo, Talk­ing Heads & More Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers

Clas­sic Songs by Bob Dylan Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” & More

7 Rock Album Cov­ers Designed by Icon­ic Artists: Warhol, Rauschen­berg, Dalí, Richter, Map­plethor­pe & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness