About:
As a bio-inspired designer and interdisciplinary researcher, Shontelle Xintong Cai is currently based in Toronto and London. Her works explore the intersections of design, art, science and technology. She experiments with information visualization, experience system and multimodal interaction with audiovisual communication technologies, programmable materials, ‘moist media’ and life science data. Her art and design practices are influenced by her academic background related to visual communication, digital media studies and plant physiology. She considers Design as Discussion: a design protocol centring around the non-human and ecological approach by sensory narratives and fictional objects. She critically and parametrically engages in designing the innovative dialogues between complex scientific knowledge, social-ecological-technical system and cross-sensory experience.
Through interdisciplinary collaboration with practitioners, her demystify, critically interrogate, and transform scientific research into multisensory interactions, transmedia storytelling that engage audiences through tactile, embodied experiences of data and science systems. She opens the discussions about the inherent values of more-than-human participatory research, technoscientific interventions, synthetic bio-design, political ecology and objecthood to the potential audience. She has shared her creative practices and design paradigm through several awards, workshops, symposiums and exhibitions in China, Canada, France and the United Kingdom.
Recent Selected Awards:
2025 On-going
2024
The G-CROSS Creative Award (UK)
The North American Applied Art and Design Competition (CANADA)
2023
British Ecology Design Award (UK)
SGADC (Singapore)
Education:
Royal College of Art- MA Information Experience Design, with distinction of degree dissertation (2020-2022)
OCAD University-BDes Graphic Design, With Completion of a Minor in Digital & Media Studies (2016-2020)
*CV Request via email/DM on social media
Index
|| 2025
Participatory Design, Experience Design, Art therapy
- Trillium: Transcultural Alchemy of Healing (Cultural Amalgamates, on-going)
|| 2024
Visual Impairement, Machine Learning, Exhibit Design
- Chromosonic Scrolls- Exhibit Design (on-going)
- Visual Echo- Experience research & Design, Information Symbiote (on-going)
- Participatory Digital v.s Natural Remedies (on-going research)
- You Are Sensual in Vitro (online exhibition ver.)
|| 2023
Bio-material Visualization, Experience Design of Bio-material, Regenerative Design Research
- Affinitive Cellulose: Narration of bio-material with coffee ground
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Indigenous botanical healing in digital realm (on-going)
|| 2022
Machine Learning in Visualization and Sonification; Morphology; Biotextile
- Augmenting Morphology: The Artificialis Historia- Bio-visualization, Machine Learning and Museum Narratives
- Augmenting Morphology: A Sonic Cabinet of Curiosity (Participated in IRCAM Forum, Paris)
- Augmenting Hybrid Specimen: Bacterial Communication
- Affinitive Cellulose research and prototype: Bacterial Cellulose in Fashion (Textile Circulatory Centre, RCA)
- Imaginary Landscape/Touch The Biofilm (Projection Mapping, Improvision, Collaborated with Lewes Music Group)
|| 2021
Techno-ecology; Epistolary Narrative; Bio-Data
- Deep Ecology and The Sublime- Online Workshop
- A Digital Utopia For The Institution- Spaculative Curation Plan
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The Tail Market- Synthetic Anatomy
- Countermeasure- Forum Recorder
- You Are Sensual in Vitro: A Visual Letter of Microfluidic Brain-on-a-chip
- Reciprocal Symphony
- Sound Commission at Stella Papaioannou’s Project “The Sound Between Us”
- The Artificial C3 Plant Project
|| 2020
Posthuman Ecologies; Bio-hacking; Biological System
- Launch A Dream- Data sonification of a
Stratospheric Balloon Flight, Instrument Hacking, Autopoiesis (Ircam Forum, Paris) -
Dear Queen St - Locative Ambient Soundscape
- Posthuman Fungi Spirituality
- White Noise- Conceptual Visual Design For Monthly Sound Event
|| 2019
Posthuman Ecologies; Bio-hacking; Design Fiction
- Posthuman Who-Posthuman Embodiment Research
- Correlate You- Interactive Experience Model Design With Quantum Physics, Mind-uploading Room
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“Botani”- Plant Science in Education
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An Orgy of Voyeurs- Novelty Seeking Mechanism
- Comate- Mental Health Tracking
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Synthetic Dreaming - Design For Debate
- AI Celebrity- Design Fictions, Installation
Chromosonic Stroll- Exhibit Design for Vision Impairment
Exhibit Design | 2024-
This exhibition reimagines social media navigation through the lens of visually impaired users, interrogating how digital platforms’ dopamine-driven interfaces can be translated into multisensory experiences. Drawing from Abraham Burickson’s Experience Design: A Participatory Manifesto (2023), the installation explores "color hunger"—the paradoxical desire to transform visual stimuli into accessible, immersive sensory languages. By merging fragmented digital aesthetics with tactile and auditory installations, the work challenges conventional understandings of accessibility, framing it as a collaborative act of world-building.
The exhibition’s design centers on improvised sensory alchemy, where visitors encounter interactive stations that convert visual elements like hashtags, emojis, and algorithmic feeds into pulsating soundscapes (rhythmic beats corresponding to trending topics), texture-coded gestures (vibrations mapped to emotional tones of social media content), and crowdsourced audio narratives. A central tactile wall mimics smartphone swiping, with each gesture triggering vibrations that encode the emotional valence of viral posts, while an adjacent soundscape layers ASMR-like whispers ("cerulean tastes like cold mint") over algorithmically distorted notifications, creating a disorienting yet immersive digital ecosystem.
Visitors navigate a space where monochromatic backdrops are periodically disrupted by neon flares, symbolizing the tension between sensory euphoria and attention economy fatigue. A circular projection area displays glitching interfaces—blurred feeds and fragmented emojis—accompanied by generative soundscapes that evolve based on audience interaction. A collaborative audio booth invites participants to contribute their own interpretations of "color" through voice recordings, which are then woven into the exhibition’s ongoing sound narrative, embodying Burickson’s ethos of participatory design.
By reframing scrolling as performative listening, the installation redefines accessibility not as a technical accommodation but as a collective poetic act. Each gesture, sound, and tactile encounter composes ephemeral stories in the "algorithmic dark," advocating for a future where digital spaces are co-created through shared sensory grammars. Ultimately, Reconstructing the Digital Palette posits that true inclusivity lies in dissolving the boundaries between human and machine, allowing marginalized perspectives to reshape the sensory vocabularies of technology.
