Studio lead Ralph Borland is an artist, designer, curator and interdisciplinary knowledge worker based in Cape Town, South Africa. His project African Robots is a collaboration with street wire artists in Southern Africa to introduce electronics and mechanics to their practice. He has a degree in Fine Art from the University of Cape Town, and a Masters in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University. His PhD from Trinity College Dublin is a critique of first world design interventions in the developing world. His post-doctoral work focused on North-South knowledge inequalities. His art-design piece Suited for Subversion (2002), a protective and performance suit for street protest, is in the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. He is currently a researcher at HUMA, the Institute for Humanities in Africa at University of Cape Town.
The studio works with a number of collaborators, including design and fabrication firm Thingking.