Roberta Faulhaber, facilitation graphique

Reportage graphique poetico-philosophique

J'ai eu le plaisir hier d'assister à une intervention d'Yves Bonnefoy, critique et poète, dans le cadre d'un séminaire organisé par Professeur Zink au Collège de France, "D'autres langues que la mienne".  Ca fait un bon moment que je voulais relever le défi de faire un reportage graphique d'un texte philosophique/poétique de haute volée.  Là, j'étais servie!  Le challenge était de rendre compte d'une organisation d'idées qui était tout sauf linéaire avec des images et métaphores récurrentes autour d'une plaidoirie en faveur de ce grand mystère, la poésie.  Ce qu'a dit Yves Bonnefoy est impossible à résumer tellement les différentes couches de sens étaient entremêlées.  Donc je suis bien contente d'avoir pu réaliser cette image, car en le regardant de nouveau, je m'aperçois que je fais de nouveau la même expérience "d'écoute" que j'avais eu en temps réel au Collège de France...  en espérant que je n'ai pas trahi la parole/langage/verbe du poète!

J'espère que d'autres l'auront aussi!

 

Happy Easter/Passover or just plain Renewal time!

My best wishes to all for a joyous season of renewal, creativity, and connection!

Facilitation graphique chez CreaFrance

Récemment j'ai eu l'honneur et le plaisir de présenter Metacarto, une jeune association qui se dévoue à la mise en scène de l'information dans tous ses états (venez nous rejoindre!),  ainsi que la facilitation graphique, aux membres d'une association déjà très connue pour son travail sur la créativité, CréaFrance.  C'était très intéressant pour moi d'avoir le feedback de tous ces experts en créativité par rapport à nos expériences ensemble.  Nous avons notamment travaillé avec la "carte d'empathie" pour réfléchir sur l'intelligence collective.

Voici ce qu'en pense CréaFrance!  Merci encore aux organisateurs pour leur invitation et merci aux participants pour leur enthousiasme.

Visual vision statement

I had the pleasure of working with a multi-cultural team of dedicated professionals recently who in an amazingly short period of time worked out their mission and vision statements.  I was asked to create an image of the vision, and this is what emerged.  As I continue to explore the potentialities of graphic facilitation, I'm more and more impressed not only by the efficacy of visual thinking, but also the power of visual feeling.  After all, the centers primarily involved in vision are on the right side of the brain, and so are those that govern our ability to relate to others...so although I don't know how, when, or why they may interact, I suspect that the more we get the right brain into the action through form, color, and image, the more effective we'll be in using our whole brains together.

Caisse à outils pour la visualisation de l'information

Pour ceux d'entre vous qui ne le connaissent pas encore, la jeune association Metacarto (dont j'ai l'honneur de faire parti) nous propose une présentation des outils actuellement disponibles sur internet pour visualiser et ainsi mieux exploiter l'océan d'information à notre disposition sur le web.  Merci à Christophe Tricot, secrétaire général de l'association (visiter son site sur le Knowledge Mapping ici). Encore du fun de la part de Christophe ici.  Il a également un grand savoir-faire avec quelques crayons de couleur aussi!

Ipad Skies

Driving along in the car along the highway last evening, I gave in to the urge to try my hand at "painting" from life on the IPad.  Using Sketchbook Pro, this is the result.  I must say I'm amazed they turned out so well!  Reminds me of a series I did a LONG time ago in oil on canvas of Santa Fe skies...  I recommend this for fellow owners of IPads as a great way not to get bored on a long drive.  No, I was not driving!

New venues...

The other day I had the pleasure of doing some graphic recording for a pharmaceutical company, which was something of a return to the past as I was involved for some years in medical communication.  I really very much enjoyed drawing the cancer cell.  I hope to have other opportunites to capture people talking about our mysterious inner realities...

 

Anna Clyde - visually facilitating musical composition

In this fascinating video, Anna Clyde, currently Mead composer in residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, shows how she used 7 panels, each representing 3 minute sections of her new orchestral piece, Night Ferry, after the poem by Seamus Heaney, 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature, "Elegy for Robert Lowell":

You were our Night Ferry
thudding in a big sea,
the whole craft ringing
with an armourer’s music
the course set wilfully across
the ungovernable and dangerous.

She used paint, charcoal pencil, and collage (images from Gustave Doré's illustrations of the Ancient Mariner), calling it a "symbiotic relationship", where certain forms inspire certain sounds, and certain rhythms images, helping her "see" the structure of this major orchestral work.

Many an artist, and many a musician, gains inspiration from the other side.  Even the vocabulary is the same -- form, harmony, rhythm, color, tone, line...  As a graphic facilitator, I find it interesting that one can visually facilitate musical composition, and as a visual artist, that a composer could be so skilled in the visual medium!  Once it's recorded and available, I plan to do my own visual version of her piece, only recording my drawing process in time.

 

 

The tree of life and death

I had an interesting time yesterday doing graphic recording and facilitating for a bunch of very creative, smart people brainstorming on ways to use the internet to better communicate digitally with the communities in the greater Paris area.  There was a session on how to fail and how to succeed... hence the tree of life and death (well, "perdant", losing, and "gagnant", winning!).  Enjoyed drawing that tree, especially the "dead" side...

Happy New Year!

Last time, it was in French.  This time, it's in English

For those interested, this is actually quite easy to do, at least if you have an IPad and Mac!  Just do your drawing in Brushes, send it to your Mac, open with Brushes viewer, create a movie, import into IMovie, slow it down or speed it up depending, add music (IMovie has lots of good pieces), and there you are!

There's also a program called ArtRage for IPad and computer that can capture the drawing process.  However, you need to use screen capture software to actually watch it outside of the software.