Visual Calisthenics
Exercise One: Take a random card and look at it as if it were a foreign object you have never seen before. Look at all of its visual elements. What are they? What do they look like?
Exercise 2: Take 3 random cards study them and then describe what each card does. Next put the cards next to one another and see how what each one does or does not fit.
Exercise 3: Select any random Major Arcana cards, study them, and notice their actions. Notice how their respective action relates to one another. Name elements and actions but extend their sound or image name meaning.
Exercise 4: Now notice how parts or sections on a card relates to the same sections in the other cards.
Exercise 5: Try these two rules to the cards you have been working with. All elements showing similar shapes refer to the same idea.
Elements from different cards that occupy the same position within the surface of the card (i.e. “center”, “upper left corner”, etc) are related.
Exercise 6: What visual elements stand out in your cards? What elements have receded and remain unnamed?
Exercise 7: Try this exercise with your named card images and notice the rhythm of the words.
_card one________ TURNS INTO __card 3______
_________ TURNS INTO __________ : 1 card name 2 card name 3 card name
(metaphors) in the names of the cards.
Exercise 9: Make up any number and style of grunts, yelps, clucks, pops, and squeals for the images and vocalize them. How does this open the image to new possibilities? (See Reflection Question 5 below)
Exercise 10: Selecting any 3 cards at random study the images, name what they do, and see how the images change or become more flexible as you pun with their names.
Reflection Question 1: How is this attempt to read from the images and their named elements different from your reading style? How does it incorporate with your style? Where do you see the critical junctions?
Reflective Question 2: What is your relationship with actually drawing images and reading images? Have you ever redrawn your deck as a way to learn it? Have you drawn it from memory and also drawn it as copying? What do the differences tell you?
Reflection Question 3: Considering the pervious exercises, do you see the value in experimenting with constraints drawn from the decks style itself or inspired by poetic exercises?
Reflection Question 4: What do you receive for yourself when you do a tarot reading for someone? Do you agree with Enrique that pleasure has been eradicated from Tarot readings? If not or so, how is it for you?
Reflection Question 5: How does this extra-lingual element (Exercise 9) open up your interpretations of your card images? How do you feel about this?
Reflection Question 6: How could you use tarot cards in a way that subverts yours and others expectations?
Reflection Question 7: Knowing the structure and stock images of the tarot what constraints might you isolate to try as rules for making the images talk?
from your deck?
