NVP017: Dead Edits: Opaque Staggeries

Very excited to announce a new dead edits (Blake Edwards and Eric Lunde) release that, had we better sense, would be the final dead edits ever issued forth into the world—we’re that excited about it.

Opaque Staggeries is, perhaps unsurprisingly, our take on Oblique Strategies, Peter Schmidt and Brian Eno’s lateral thinking exercises. We have come up with 112 ideas to get you thinking / unblock creative processes, housed in two delightful (and I dare say refined) jewelry boxes. We intended to replicate both the size (7 cm x 9 cm) and color (black text on white side, all black on the flip) of the original edition of cards, but, inadvertently taking one of our own suggestions (“measure once cut twice”) it soon became apparent the box wouldn’t shut if we had kept the same size. So, they’re a little bit smaller.

Of course, dead edits also creates audio, so enclosed with (technically sandwiched between) the boxes is a 3” CDR, the audio upon which is a tri-layered recording of me typesetting the Opaque Staggeries in Quark 4.0 on an iBook G3 while one of Eric’s “opycay” devices recorded and played back intermittently, a microcassette recorder recorded and played back intermittently, and a microcassette with audio from Eric played back intermittently; the 60-ish minute process was captured on a zoom recorder (non-intermittently) and then layered to create the final product.

As a side note, as all of the cards were cut by hand, there were some glitches in the matrix, so a few editions have one or two “replacement” cards: the same strategy, but a different card backing and paper finish.

This lovely little item is in an edition of 22 copies, signed and numbered, and it’s going to be $32 ppd in the US. Overseas orders, please email for shipping costs.

Please note, this will be ready to ship by December 18, and payment can be made by that point.
thanks much,

Blake