Hola! My name is Emily Eickhoff; welcome to my Fab Academy website, where I’ll be documenting my work and musings in Fab Academy over the next 5 months. I consider myself extremely fortunate to be taking Fab Academy at Fab Lab Barcelona.
There’s a Catalan phrase, “Seny i Rauxa,” which captivated me from the first moment I heard it. A sort of Catalan yin-yang, it is used to describe the city of Barcelona and the Catalan people and culture: the balance arising from a tension between the opposing but complementary forces of seny (“sanity”) and rauxa (“raucous, rough”). “Seny” is action arising from the rational, the reasonable: calculated and logical, mindful and disciplined, practical and orderly. “Rauxa” on the other hand, represents the impulsive, the instinctive and spontaneous. It’s a burst of activity, a flash of color; a visceral, vibrant, creative, raw and wild energy. Both are beautiful, and together they are complete.
Held within this simple and succinct phrase, it feels to me, is the seed of a much larger truth about the nature of life. I find it both moving and inspiring, and it feels to be a fitting theme for my time at Fab Academy.
So welcome to my own little Fab Academy rendition of Seny i Rauxa, where I will be exploring the tension between the messy, mysterious world of biology - of tissues, of blood, of randomness and adaptation and resilience - and the ordered, binary world of computers and machines.
It is my goal to explore how digital fabrication can be applied to enhance understanding of anatomy, and more specifically, of hearts. See my About page to learn more about my path here, my motivations, and my interests. How can digital toolsets and workflows be used to augment the care for patients with congenital heart defects in a hospital setting, both in the consultation room and in the operating room? This question is at the core of my Final Project.
To find documentation of my work for each week of the Academy, peruse my Weekly Assignments.
Welcome to my Seny i Rauxa.