Testimonials

I’ve collected a few responses from people who have engaged with the project, which you can see below.

“The most precious thing that I’ve got out of this collaboration so far, is learning a lot from you about how to communicate about my work. Because doctors would go: “Wow this is really cool. I segment DICOM images into 3D-printed models to rehearse my procedures” and audiences go “what’s he talking about?”. Ralph tells a story, and I’ve literally been taken along for the ride. I’ve learnt so much from you about how to communicate about my work, how to think about it, how to draw people in. I really appreciate that.”

Rudolph Venter, Orthopaedic Surgeon and project collaborator
Stellenbosch University, South Africa

The Cape Town Science Centre has employed many Science Communicators and hosted multiple independent Science Communicators as a key addition to our interactive science programmes. They are chosen for their unique ability to inspire, entertain and educate diverse audiences, whether professionals, amateurs, or young people. Ralph Borland is a unique talent who has inspired, entertained and educated our audience, with his innovative project Bone Flute.

Steven Sack, Managing Director 
Cape Town Science Centre

I have followed Ralph’s work closely for well over a decade and he remains a constant point of reference when I am trying to show students what a critical, object-oriented engagement with the Big Questions about the relationships between art and science, art and design, the body and society, and thinking and making, can look like.

With Bone Flute in particular, he is both subject and object of his enquiry, as researcher, artist, and patient. In his work, communication is both objective and method. Conversation and collaboration are baked into his process and production. He has an uncanny ability to take the most complex problems and find visual and object-based solutions that use humour to engage serious questions, whilst provoking wonder and curiosity.

His conceptual economy is stunning, which is for me the primary communicative power of his work. He makes things that talk, to borrow Lorraine Daston’s phrase, and the beauty and power of his work lies in its ability to talk in different ways to audiences of all ages, and from different fields of expertise.

Kathryn Smith, Chair
Department of Visual Arts
Stellenbosch University

Ralph Borland’s Bone Flute is an award-winning, revolutionary project that simplifies the complex processes of Artificial Intelligence through a sophisticated archiving of medical and bodily encounters in treatment and healing. It successfully brings to the fore and gives vivid insights into how data, algorithms and other technological processes engage with and intersect with the human body.

Divine Fuh, Director
HUMA – Institute for Humanities in Africa
University of Cape Town

Some audience responses from the AIAIA exhibition at Brutal.