Since Golan's questions for generative artists and Jim Campbell’s Formula for Computer Art proved so popular, here are three other lists of questions and creative strategies.

Oblique Strategies: Honour thy error as a secret intention. In 1975 Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt (a painter) published the Oblique Strategies. The Strategies is a collection of cards, with short texts on one side meant to inspire artists to try a different approach when experiencing a creative block. The creative process is often fickle, and most artists develop certain tricks that they tend to rely on when things get tough. For good or bad these develop into clichees and become potential impediments to the work itself.

Enter the Oblique Strategies: Draw a card by random, and it might give such sage advice as “Honour thy error as a secret intention”, “Be less critical”, “Steal a solution.” etc. Intentionally non-specific, the cards are meant to jog the mind to see the problem from a different angle.

Gregory Taylor has a great page on the Oblique Strategies. A new edition of the deck (as well as T-shirts) can be bought from the EnoShop There are also many online versions, again Gregory Taylor has an overview of these.

Bruce Mau: Don’t be cool. The Incomplete Manifesto for Growth is a classic text by design guru Bruce Mau, (co-author of "S M L XL"). The manifesto outlines a critical approach to creative work, some of which (like no.26: “Don’t enter awards competitions.”) are design-specific, but most apply equally to the art field. No. 24 is bound to amuse: “Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.”

Written in 1998, the manifesto now seems a bit didactic. For a critical take on it, read Dean Allen's annotated version. At the time it appeared it was of part of a critical discourse struggling to make designers more critical in the whirlwind that was the dotcom. Depending on who you ask, that discourse has by now either succeeded or fallen out of fashion. However, that does not mean that Mau’s points aren’t still good.

Vademecum of Digital Art: If an artwork consists mainly in its description on paper, wonder if it is really necessary to produce at high cost its real size version. Written by Antoine Schmitt in 2003 as a response to “digital art” of dubious quality, the Vademecum of Digital Art aims to provide a context for criticizing media art. It outlines a series of tests or questions by which a work of “digital” art may be appraised. Some of the points are well-observed, like no.6:

The Vademecum does not allow media art the defense of “newness”. Once presented as art, it must be subject to history and critical theory.