They say things like 'Fat hen kick?' They are much more difficult to use, and in fact, much more inspiring in a way than the original cards. About Grotesque Tables II, he says: 'The results are completely nutty. He mentions it at the very end of the lecture (at 01:34:32). I found out about Noah's deck when it was mentioned by Eno himself in a lecture that he was giving at the Edinburgh College of Art. (There is no Grotesque Tables I: the II is the pair of 'i's' from the original title.) So, you get things like: 'Be Frictionless Latecomer' out of Oblique Strategies' 'Be Less Critical More Often,' 'Notice Arc' from 'Accretion,' and 'Elope by mere thread' from 'Breath more deeply.' The phrases on the cards, as well as the deck's title, are anagrams of the originals.

Called Grotesque Tables II, this is a deck of cards comprised of anagrams of Oblique Strategies. And that's often where you find your ah-has, in the midst of the mental gymnastics you're doing in trying to match up the drawn card with your 'worthwhile dilemma.'Īnd that's why I am now so in love with artist and musician, Noah Wall's meta-generative response to Eno and Schmidt's generative art cards. 'Simplify a matter of work,' 'The inconsistency principle,' 'Only a part, not the whole.' You really have to work to try and reconcile the problem that you're facing with one of these often vexing statements. One of the things that I think makes Oblique Strategies so effective for so many people is how annoying, ponderous, and impenetrable many of the cards are.

I use my deck quite a bit and love how it fits into my creative process. In my world of hoodoo and woo-woo, oracular cards should be physical. When I heard, in the early aughts, that the long out-of-print deck was back in print, I jumped at the chance to finally own a physical copy. Oblique Strategies was one of the first apps I installed on my first iPhone (and have had on every phone since). I fell in love with Oblique Strategies when I fell in love with all of the above records that were created with its assistance.

Oblique strategies cards purchase