Here comes another embarassing admission.
If you asked me, I'd tell you that I am a great admirer of Eno. A fan in a that's-awesome-and-beautiful-but-I'll-never-understand-all-of-it kind of way. He is one of those people who is sort of, um, meta and uncontested.
So when I read that Andrew used the Oblique Strategies as a way to get Design Engaged thought out, well, yes. I had never heard of them. Evidence that I am not cool and have only ever PASSED as cool. Somehow this obviously momentous chunk of music/art/creative history just went right on by me; perhaps it sensed that I wasn't ready for it or something.
Nevertheless.
If you don't know about them either, you should have a look. I venture to describe them as pragmatic koans, meant to propel you through a creative project that seems determined to hang itself. They were designed by Eno and Peter Schmidt, apparently sort of synchronously in the '70s and now there are about a billion implementations of them online, some just text sources, some animated and randomized. This is the one I'm using. Because Stoney doesn't say which edition they're from, I'm assuming it's the first.
However. If anyone has 30 pounds to spare I would SO like to have a material version. They're for sale at enoshop. Santa? I guess we could make our own, but after that last project involving cards, I think I'd rather spend the money...
New: Okazo has a nice flash version of the 4th edition. Best to open it from the link on the page so that the new window is the proper size - you get a better feeling of actually taking a card (there's also a description here of how the 4th edition differs from the earlier ones).
Posted by Heather at November 30, 2004 05:47 PM
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