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
-
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
-
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
-
“Botani”- Plant Science in Education
-
An Orgy of Voyeurs- Novelty Seeking Mechanism
- Comate- Mental Health Tracking
-
Synthetic Dreaming - Design For Debate
- AI Celebrity- Design Fictions, Installation
Dear Queen St
Locative Ambient Soundscape | Interactive Moving Image | Live Streaming / 2021
Live Streaming Video can be viewed here
The project, “Dear Queen St. - 12,048 km Livestream Version”is an acoustic territory exploration of the local community in Toronto, Canada, engaging to deliver the ecology of feelings towards the particular residential area, the Queen St community. The nostalgia of bring present on the street is the common expectation during th global pandemic period. After participating in the campaign of “#longivequeenwest”, I intend to evoke the sense of remote presence and help my audience to experience the vitality of local community via soundscape.
The mixed fragments of auditory objects and the integrated sonic composition help to develop the auditory perceptions and orient the audience immersively (Plomp, 145). Thus, I engage in the techniques of field recording, sound design and ambient house music, generating the fragmented information of urban and natural sound in the Queen St neighborhood.
Enhancing the sensual atmosphere of a soundscape effectively guides the audience to get a flavor of the particular area. The slowly unfolding sound structure and transitions between notes leave space to the audience for portraying the specific local community and diving into the information and the emotions they believed.
The semiotics of collage experiments and techniques of montage, and the real-time motion and interaction controlling by audio clipwere explored to deliver a remote presence and livestream environment to the global audience.
Side Story:
The poetic audio script of “Dear Queen W” is designed as a resilient message of the soundscape album “Dear Queen St”, expressing the endless love of the local community during the pandemic period.
