Welcome to my research site, ‘Objects in development’. My name is Ralph Borland, and I am an artist, curator and researcher based in Cape Town, South Africa. My main art projects are African Robots, a collaboration with street wire artists in Southern Africa to create new forms of interactive art, and its sister project SPACECRAFT, which focuses on science fiction wire art. In 2016 I co-curated the exhibition Design and Violence at Science Gallery Dublin in collaboration with NY MoMA, and Future Present: Design in a Time of Urgency for Science Gallery Detroit in 2020. My art-design piece Suited for Subversion (2002) is in the permanent collection of the NY MoMA.
My most recent research post (from March 2021 – March 2023) was with the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The close frame of my research was into the human implications of the role Artificial Intelligence (AI) may play in healthcare (particularly hospitals) in Africa. I was part of a team funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, under the title ‘Future Hospitals: 4IR and Ethics of Care in Africa‘. My wider remit was the role of the human in the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) in Africa, which brings this research into relationship with my creative work with other iconic technologies of the 4IR: Virtual Reality (VR), 3D printing and CNC processes, and interactive electronics. See under HUMA in the top menu for posts related to my research there; I produced the art-research piece Bone Flute, and showed it on the exhibition AIAIA – Aesthetic Interventions in Artificial Intelligence in Africa.
Much of this site is a record of my academic work for my PhD, ‘Radical Plumbers and PlayPumps – Objects in development‘, which I submitted in 2011 to the School of Engineering at Trinity College, Dublin. My background is in Fine Art (I studied sculpture at UCT) and interactive telecommunications (my Masters from New York University). I completed two postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Cape Town, first at the African Centre for Cities (2013 – 2014) and subsequently on the research project Global Arenas of Knowledge (2014 – 2017) which investigated ‘Southern Theory‘. I’m co-author of a paper ‘Southern Agency: Navigating Local and Global Imperatives in Climate Research‘ published by MIT Press’ Global Environmental Politics in August 2018, which resulted from this research.
The broad frame of my research, as represented in the title of this site, has been into the multifunctionality of objects – especially those that combine functions for the user with communication to audiences. I describe such objects, and our understanding of them, as in development – their production and study is an emerging area – and I’m particularly interested in the deployment of such objects in the developing world.
My PhD thesis ‘Radical Plumbers and PlayPumps – Objects in development’ (2011) investigates popular interest in ‘design for the developing world’. It argues that the advancement of small scale technologies designed for users in the developing world – to provide energy, water, education, income and so on – is influenced by how well these projects communicate to ‘first world’ audiences. In my thesis I analyse the South African PlayPump, a children’s roundabout that pumps water, as an example of such an object. The PlayPump attracted high levels of funding through the compelling story it told to audiences to the project, despite the fact that it was not very successful at meeting the direct needs of its users.
I keep track of my current research interests, and whatever else catches my eye, in my journal. Visit the reference section for my PhD thesis bibliography and Zotero collection, and other texts that relate to my research. You can contact me here. For my wider work, please visit ralphborland.net. You can view my work on Instagram @ralphborland