Roberta Faulhaber, facilitation graphique

D'Arcy Thompson and contemporary design

Scottish D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson has long held an extraordinary fascination for us visual thinkers, including many a 20th century artist. Inspired by Albrecht Durer's famous heads (see below, we even have a Vulcan), he developed a mathematical model as to how environmental forces affect the growth of organisms in his famous "On Growth and Form".  

Of particular interest is the structural approach that ensures changes in the part affect the entire form.  His influence over major figures from many different disciplines from the arts to structuralism during the 20th century was huge.  Today, while looking for ways to use a 3D matrix scatterplot to represent the field of visualization (sorry, no luck yet), I ran into a lovely design company called Nervous System -- their own words, "a generative design studio that works at the intersection of science, art, and technology. We create using a novel process that employs computer simulation to generate designs and digital fabrication to realize products."

I recommend their short video.  Below, one of their luminaries.  Is this D'Arcy Thompson's influence still at work?  Don't know enough about the mathematics to say, but the work is inspirational in its use of organic form.  Let us draw trees!

 

Durer's "profilographs"

D'Arcy Thompson, Chapter 12

"Hyphae lamp" by Nervous System

Thought forms

Little did I know when I began doing a little research prior to posting some images from Annie Besant's and C.W. Leadbeater's "Thought forms" the vast landscape that was about to emerge.  By which I mean the incredible reach of these 19th century ideas and their far-reaching influence on art (see "Kandinsky's Though Forms and the Occult Roots of Modern Art, published by a theosophical website), science, and society ever since.  But if I were to attempt to give you even a glimpse of this landscape, you would not be hearing from me for about a year, so let's just enjoy some of the "Thought Forms" presented in the book as well as their theories on the meanings of color (more details in "Thought Forms" on the link above.

While the authors do not explain the origins of these thought forms and their intepretations of color, one can speculate that we are in the presence of one of the first attempts to consciously explore visual language in its non-representational form.  Let's not open that can of worms either, but let me just say that for years now, in drawing, painting, creativity, and graphic facilitation classes, when I ask participants to represent emotions and physical states non-figuratively, they do seem to come up with formally similar images in similar colors -- like sharp irregular forms in black and red for anger, blue parallel lines for peace, or central radiating lines in warm, bright colors for joy...

Perhaps, following Merleau-Ponty, Lakoff, and many other philosophers of embodiment, one can hypothesize that human beings share a number of basic physical experiences both in their bodies and of the outside world, which might explain why in design thinking in general, visual analogies are such powerful tools...

But enough!  herewith the color table and a few examples of our famous Theosophists' thought forms:

And now, some thought forms. 

Vague pure affection

Vague selfish affection.  Dirty colors ?

 Greed for drink!

Angry jealousy!

More on the "Thought Forms" website!

 

Memorizing poetry with visual thinking

Recently a friend of mine discovered mindmapping and decided to try to use it to memorize poetry, an ongoing although until now frustrated ambition. 

About a week later, we met in a café and she proceeded to recite poetry to me for half an hour -- including Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold (see below).  I was truly astounded, not only that she had successfully memorized all this poetry but by the remarkable delivery and the way the central metaphors came through so clearly in the way she spoke the verses.

Then she showed me the visual notes she used to memorize Mathew Arnold's poem.  Once again we see how simple imagery combined with words can make meaning more accessible and enhance our ability to remember that meaning.  The oral tradition lives!   Imagine having all this wonderful poetry in your head, ready to be spoken and enrich everyone's lives...  Is this how Homer learned the Odyssey, one wonders?

Off to memorize Dover Beach myself.

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Visual devices

Recently I gave my Kindle to my mother, since I read my Kindle books on the IPad, and while she's quite techno-friendly, the Kindle is not the easiest device to master for the neophyte.  I explained the various keys, buttons, switches, plugs and menus, but it was all rather confusing.  She took notes.  I drew a picture of the device labeling this and that.  It was all pretty confusing.

Then it hit me.  A new application for graphic facilitation! 

See below.  I'm sure with a little practice this could be quite an interesting tool...

Mapping Tolkien's Lord of the Rings

As someone always interested in mapping in general, more specifically in how to convey mutliple realities in a single image, and in the wake of the new film The Hobbit by Peter Jackson, I've been looking at various attempts to map the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, a book I have been re-reading on a regular basis since age 12. 

Of course, this is a complex task, since any book by Tolkien reverberates with the echoes of past and future history, and the cast of characters is vast, inter-related, and of course the epitome of diversity with at least six of seven races present at all times (Elves, Men, Hobbits, Dwarves, Orcs, Ents, and Maia, not to mention Eagles, Ravens, large spiders, Balrogs, and Dragons).

Here's an example of a "narrative chart" (click to see large image) of the Lord of the Rings that maps character juxtaposition in time (not interactions, begging the pardon of the author, xkcd). You can also enjoy (Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Angry Men, and Primer (my personal favorite...).

Then there's The Lord of the Rings project  where you can find a very complete timeline going all the way back to the Time of the Two Trees.  I suppose this is useful when trying to remember timeframes and connections between different peoples, but not very exciting otherwise from a visual standpoint, being essentially a list of dates connected to a map of Middle Earth with interactive lines. They also have a geneology table that includes Eru (God), dragons and spiders (I always thought these were a king of evil maia, and they forgot the Balrogs) and "anomalies" such as Tom Bombadil and Goldberry (whom I suspect are also Maia).  Their blog is well worth a visit.  Here's a visual timeline in that time-honored format the circular time line of the history of the One Ring by Emil Johanssen:

Now for a circular time map by Co.Design published on that wonderful dataviz site Visual.ly, although here we are only following the members of the Fellowship. This representation gives the amount of writing devoted to certain places in Middle Earth in addition to tracing the paths of the members of the fellowship. 

In conclusion, I have to say I'm a bit disappointed!  Where are the maps of themes, languages, the philosophy of Middle-Earth?  The focus would appear to be purely chronological. I'm taking this as a personal challenge to produce something different.  Stay tuned!

 

 

Text, color, shapes, talk, change...

I love to browse around in Extremetech.com, somewhat addictive but full of fascinating developments in just about everything thanks to the bleeding edge of technology. 

Today, I ran across an article about a study of how the brain categorizes and maps everything we see (you can download the actual study on the site).  To quote the author of the article:

"...neuroscience doctoral student Alexander Huth had five participants watch two hours of movie trailers that contained over 1,700 categories of actions and objects. During that time, their brain activity was recorded using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), measuring blood flow in various spots in the brain. Using linear regression, the scientists were then able to analyze the collected data, and subsequently build a model showing how all of those actions and objects fit into around 30,000 locations within the cortex.

"After that point the researchers translated the model to a visual form. Using principal component analysis – a mathematical procedure used to provide a synopsis for a large amount of data — the scientists were able to visualize those 1,700 categories and how they related to one another..."

According to our author, the map represents "semantic neighborhoods", categories of things the brain finds similar to each other, and not only that -- apparently different people's brains organize things in similar ways -- at least for those five participants, assuming they're not mentally linked!

What immediately struck me is how the brain appears to have text, color, shapes, talk, groups, and change all in the same neighborhood...  Could this be why visual facilitation works so well?  That is to say, does this semantic proximity translate into better thinking/problem-solving/communications?
Well, that's a big jump... but a tempting one to make!

Related articles

Scientists Construct First Map of How the Brain Organizes Everything We See

IAF Europe 2012

Back from Geneva where I attended the IAF (International Association of Facilitators) Europe 2012 conference.  I made my usual pitch in favor of using graphic facilitation to a group of facilitators who signed up to learn some visual vocabulary and a few useful templates, and even had a chance to harvest the keynote speakers.  Great workshops, good food, wonderful landscape, and a lot of interesting people in our very, very multicultural group.  The theme was diversity and what this meant for facilitation in terms of methods, approaches, efficacy, and innovation.

Congratulations to IAF Geneva folks for the terrific job they did.  Next year, Denmark!

Internet Solidaire

J'ai eu le plaisir et le privilège de récolter trois Forum Ouvert à la Maison du Citoyen à Fontenay-sous-Bois lors du colloque sur les problématiques autour de l'internet solidaire, ou comment oeuvrer pour que le monde numérique ne soit pas un facteur d'exclusion -- ou un système totalitaire, d'après un des participants.  La récolte était réalisée avec projection sur écran sur IPad avec Brushes.  Le défi de la récolte sur IPad consiste à garder une continuité stylistique à travers plusieurs "planches" virtuel, car on ne peut pas visualiser en temps réel le résultat en entier.  Le "truc" ici c'est le "fil rose" qui vogue à travers la conversation.  Je voulais aussi mettre "l'humain" au centre en incluant des grandes figures.

Chose intéressante:  les tablettes tel qu'IPAD ont apparemment démontré leur efficacité en facilitant l'apprentissage des élèves en situation d'handicap et l'utilisation d'internet chez les personnes âgées.

Félicitations à la ville pour des échanges sans langue de bois et plein de franchise et de créativité. 

Première partie

Deuxième partie

 

 

Prezi evangelist practices what he preaches

Zane Groshelle works for Prezi, wandering the world spreading the word.  He attended the IFVP 2012 Conference in Pittsburgh, where he gave a workshop on how to use Prezi.  It's cloud-based software that is incredibly easy to use, flexible and playful with its zoomable canvas.  You can include photos, videos, and documents, and the software has a huge range of forms and colors to choose from.  It can be used as a structured presentation or a brainstorming tool, and you can even draw in it.

More information on Prezi here.

Zane created a Prezi that tells you a bit about all the people who were there!  You can also look at a Prezi I created for a client from a digital harvest of a conference on participatory knowledge building.  And why?  So that those who were not present could participate of course.

 

IFVP Conference 2012 - Mike Rhode graphic harvesting

One of the most interesting aspects of the IFVP conferences is the opportunity to compare and contrast styles of graphic recording, learning from each other.  I thought I would try to give you a taste of this with a series of graphic recordings on the big paper during Mike Rhode's keynote address on sketchnoting.

Unlike the previous poste on the same keynote, where I included my own sketchnotes, graphic recording/harvesting is designed to benefit not the graphic recorder but rather the audience, serving as an anchor for memorisation and a stimulus to discussion. 

Sketchnotes are usually primarily intended for the use of the sketcher, who records the ideas that are important to him/her without any need to think about their usefulness to anyone else.  Naturally, sketchnotes can be made with an eye to the educational.  In some of my subsequent posts from the conference I'll show you a few examples of that.

I think I asked everyone's permission, but if I didn't, I hope they will forgive me and consider this free advertising.  Also, I apologize for the quality of some of the images.  Sometimes the lighting was not ideal.

Enjoy these talented people!

From Greg Gersch:

 

Tim Hamons:

Kelly Kingman, ImageThink

Loretta Line:

Kevin Rechin: