Tag Archives: Ralph Borland

Ergonomic massage tool

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Ergonomic massage tool

Ergonomic massage tool

Ergonomic massage tool held

Ergonomic massage tool held

I designed this ergonomic tool while I was an art student in 1996, as part of an exploration into shapes that are formed by or respond to natural forces. This tool is based on the principle that you should keep your wrist in as straight a line as possible, rather than flexing it to the side as you do with conventional tool grips, like a screwdriver for example. A friend at the time was studying physiotherapy, and I made this tool for her to use for precision massaging of bulky sportsmen. This is a recast replica.

– Ralph Borland, 2014

Handy Ears

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Handy Ears

Handy Ears prototype

Ciaran wearing Handy Ears prototype

Ciaran wearing Handy Ears prototype

Handy Ears is a prototype for a piece of apparatus to enhance the wearer’s hearing. Casts of my hands, rendered in silicon rubber by special effects and prosthetics fabricator Tristan Versluis, cup the wearer’s ears to amplify and direct sound. Based on the experience of this familiar action’s effect on one’s engagement with the environment, this tool leaves the hands free, and invites associations between the whorls of the ear and the folds of fingers and palms, cupped hands and parabolic reflectors. Echoing headphones in form, the piece suggests a gentler enhancement of listener experience.

– Ralph Borland, 2014

Starling

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Starling

Starling

Starling is the first prototype in my project African Robots, a project to create interactive electronic street art. ‘Street art’ in this instance means art sold by people on the street, in South Africa – usually forms of handicraft using inexpensive materials like fencing and electrical wire, beads and waste wood, plastic and metal. I’m particularly interested in wire work, where artists make three dimensional forms from wire. It’s a very economical use of material to define a form. The first prototype is a mechanical starling, a common urban bird in Cape Town. Running on a Nokia phone battery, it incorporates a sound-synthesizer whose pitch depends on light exposure, glowing LED eyes, and head and wing movement via a cheap hacked motor and handmade gear.

– Ralph Borland, 2014

Suited for Subversion

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Suited for Subversion

Suited for Subversion

Suited for Subversion is a project to create a suit that protects the wearer at large-scale street protests. The suit also monitors the wearer’s pulse and projects an amplified heartbeat out of a speaker in the chest of the suit. I designed and fabricated the first prototype of the suit as part of my Masters Degree in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. The project draws on my work as an activist involved in street demonstrations in New York, and is influenced by the work of other activists and demonstrators who wear protective clothing and make creative use of tools and technologies for protest. As much as my suit is armour, it is also disarming; as much provocation as protection. Suited for Subversion was part of the exhibition SAFE: Design Takes on Risk at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2005/2006. The first edition was purchased by the Museum in 2006.

– Ralph Borland, 2014