Art–Science Collaboration: EthicsLab’s Creative Residency at the Neuroscience Institute

In this lecture, artist and researcher Ralph Borland reflects on his two-month artist residency with EthicsLab at the UCT Neuroscience Institute, sharing how his practice engages questions of ethics, technology, and care within a scientific and clinical environment.

Drawing on past projects such as African Robots & SPACECRAFT and Bone Flute, Borland discusses his approach to art as a form of inquiry—using material experimentation, spatial intervention, and attention to atmosphere to surface ethical questions that are often lived rather than formally articulated. He introduces his proposal for a large-scale light installation in the Neuroscience Institute atrium, explaining his use of dichroic lenses and presenting a working prototype that demonstrates how light shifts in relation to movement, angle, and time.

The talk explores how artistic practice can function as a critical resource within scientific institutions: slowing attention, working with uncertainty, and shaping the experience of research and clinical spaces for researchers, students, patients, and families. Rather than offering conclusions, the lecture reflects on process, presence, and the role of art in opening new ways of noticing and engaging the ethical dimensions of science and technological innovation.