“OBLIQUE STRATEGIES – CONCRETE RESULTS”.

“OBLIQUE STRATEGIES – CONCRETE RESULTS”.

Commissioned by Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and based on the ideas of Brian Eno.

EXTRA INFORMATION:

“OBLIQUE STRATEGIES” was an experimental piece of musical Drama inspired by some of the philosophies and working methods of Brian Eno.

Brian Eno, formerly of Roxy Music, holds a degree in Fine Arts, he is an Honorary Doctor of Technology at the University of Plymouth and visiting Professor at the Royal College of Arts. He is a music producer and has worked on albums with, amongst others, David Bowie, U2 and Laurie Anderson. He is credited with the development of ambient music and exploited new technology, pioneering cross-technology arts.

In 1975 Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt published a set of over one hundred cards, on each was printed a suggestion or point for consideration. The idea of these “oblique strategies” was that if a working artist, in any media, blocked, they should pick a card, at random, and, by following the strategy, they should find a positive direction to progress along.

In his book, “A year with swollen appendices,” Brian Eno discusses the theory of “Edge culture,” in which he likens culture to a modern-day city – the old traditional centre is dying and new “active nodes” of culture are springing up around its edge, feeding from it and linking into one another.

The Overture began with this idea and then, using the texts of the “oblique strategy” cards, it dramatizes some of Eno’s working methods.