The List as an Invention Process
Keywords
List; research
Abstract
The list serves mundane purposes such as groceries and to-dos, but it also serves as an invention process. Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, first produced in 1975 and available in four editions, is an evolving list of over 100 instructions meant to help the creative person deal with common obstacles such as writer’s block. In our meditation on the creative possibilities for the list in humanist studies, the authors—John Venecek and Barry Mauer—took Brian Eno’s instructions both as directives and as subjects for inquiry, showing us a possible approach to rethinking the essay as a form and as a process. Eno stated, “The function of the Oblique Strategies was, initially, to serve as a series of prompts which said, ‘Don't forget that you could adopt *this* attitude,’ or ‘Don't forget you could adopt *that* attitude.’"These cards evolved from our separate observations on 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-evidentBrian Eno/Peter Schmidt Oblique Strategies © 1975, 1978, and 1979Working in alphabetical order, Mauer and Venecek selected one prompt per week from Eno’s list and responded to each with approximately 500 words, writing our sections separately. We took turns selecting prompts for each other so that one of us would always be surprised, which is a key aspect of Eno’s strategies and his composing process. At the end of the week, we shared our results and selected the next prompt. What we present here is the result of our summer-long experiment.
Date Created
January 2020
STARS Citation
Mauer, Barry and Venecek, John, "The List as an Invention Process" (2020). EGS Content. 384.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/egs_content/384
https://works.bepress.com/barry-mauer/19/download/