ENO, Brian, and Peter SCHMIDT. Oblique Strategies [title on lid, continued on first card:] Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas.

ENO, Brian, and Peter SCHMIDT. Oblique Strategies [title on lid, continued on first card:] Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas. First published 1975, slightly revised edition 1978.

Title and instruction card, and 128 text-cards (72 x 99 mm), all in the original black paper-covered box, lid stamped in white on the sides; box minimally rubbed, contents very good and clean.

Second revised edition, one of 1000 sets produced. "These cards evolved from our separate observations of the principles underlying what we were 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 possibilities being continuously reviewed in the mind) or by drawing a single card from the shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case the card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear. They are not final, as new ideas will present themselves, and others will become self-evident" (instructions).

The musician and thinker Brian Eno does not need much introduction. He is certainly one of the most influential musicians of the last fifty years. His friend and collaborator Peter Schmidt (1931-1980) was a British multimedia artist, printmaker, painter, and experimenter with electronic sounds. He had been born to Jewish parents in Berlin and survived as an enemy alien on the Isle of Wight, before studying art and being exhibited many times during and after his lifetime. He performed electronic music at the ICA's 1961 event A Painter's Use of Sound and was advisor to their groundbreaking exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity in 1968.

Oblique Strategies gained a huge followership amongst creative people, for instance David Bowie and his band who used these cards for inspiration during their Berlin recording sessions.

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