tiny gigantic

In 1975, two artists—Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt—collaborated to create a deck of cards designed to help break creative deadblocks. Here’s what Brian Eno has to say about them:

“These cards evolved from our separate observations of the principles underlying what we are doing. Sometimes they were recognized in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated. They can be used as a pack (a set of posibilities being continuously reviewed in the mind) or by drawing a single card from a shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case the card is trusted even if it appropriateness is quite unclear. They are not final, as new ideas will present themselves, and others will become self-evident.”

There are now 5 editions, and they are filled with super interesting, super cryptic advice that feels (to me at least) very powerful for provoking a new way of thinking when you’re stuck.

Want to draw a card from the deck? Do it online here or here or here.

Wikipedia for Brian Eno here, Peter Schmidt here, and Oblique Strategies here.

Image credit Peter Schmidt.

Brian Eno previously in Tiny Gigantic here.

03/22/07 by Axel Albin

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 5:30 pm and is filed under Thinking, Toolbox, Heroes, Rebels, Inventions, Gimme. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.