"Oblique Strategies" on the iPhone

An Oblique Strategies deck is now available (for free) on the iPhone. Oblique Strategies (subtitled "over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas") is a deck of cards created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. It was first published in 1975 (the deck is now in the fifth edition).

Each card contains a phrase or cryptic suggestion that can be used to break a creative block. You draw a card and follow the strategy blindly by applying it obliquely to your problem:

Twist the spine
Emphasize differences
Change instrument roles

From The Oblique Strategies Web Site:

The deck itself had its origins in the discovery by Brian Eno that both he and his friend Peter Schmidt (a British painter whose works grace the cover of "Evening Star" and whose watercolours decorated the back LP cover of Eno's "Before and After Science" and also appeared as full-size prints in a small number of the original releases) tended to keep a set of basic working principles which guided them through the kinds of moments of pressure - either working through a heavy painting session or watching the clock tick while you're running up a big buck studio bill. Both Schmidt and Eno realized that the pressures of time tended to steer them away from the ways of thinking they found most productive when the pressure was off. The Strategies were, then, a way to remind themselves of those habits of thinking - to jog the mind.

On iTunes some of the comments regarding Oblique Strategies complain about the deck not being randomized. That issue seems to have been addressed. However, a nice future feature would be to randomize the deck based on the user shaking the iPhone (as suggested in several of the comments).

Related posts: 100 Acorns, Assignment Art

[via Make]