How a deck of cards helps artists break through creative deadlocks
In short: When inspiration fails, sometimes the best solution is a random constraint. Created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, Oblique Strategies uses gnomic suggestions to force lateral thinking, helping musicians and artists escape writer's block by embracing unexpected directions and challenging their existing processes.
The Oblique Strategies method emerged from the overlapping creative experiments of musician Brian Eno and multimedia artist Peter Schmidt. In 1970, Schmidt produced "The Thoughts Behind the Thoughts," a collection of 55 sentences printed on disused studio scraps. Simultaneously, Eno was developing his own set of handwritten bamboo cards. By late 1974, the two artists combined their ideas into a single deck of 7-by-9-centimetre cards, first published for general sale.
The cards function by providing a challenging constraint or aphorism to resolve a dilemma. These suggestions can be specific to music composition or more general. The philosophy relies on trusting the card's instruction even when its immediate relevance is unclear. Many creators have drawn inspiration from this method; for example, the B-52's employed the cards while tracking their debut LP, and Coldplay used them throughout their 2008 production of "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends".
The impact of the cards extends into legendary recording sessions, most notably during David Bowie's "Berlin triptych" of albums—Low, "Heroes", and Lodger—where Eno served as a collaborator. The cards have even entered popular culture, appearing in the film Slacker and being referenced in songs by R.E.M. and MGMT. While Schmidt's sudden death in early 1980 made the original editions rare, the project's influence persists through new editions and tributes, such as the 2025 Ambagious Tactics deck created by Northampton Artslab.
The cards represent a bridge between intuition and intellect, often helping artists recognize principles they were already applying but had not yet articulated. Whether used to navigate a musical composition or even a football match, they serve as a tool for breaking mental blocks through the power of lateral thinking.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Oblique Strategies
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