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 and cross-sensory experience. To practice the design methodologies and transmedia storytelling via scientific systems and computation, 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 workshops, symposiums and exhibitions in China, Canada, Franc and the United Kingdom.
Education:
OCAD University-BDes Graphic Design,With Completion of a Minor in Digital & Media Studies (2016-2020)
Royal College of Art- MA Information Experience Design, with distinction of degree dissertation (2020-2022)
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Index
|| 2022
Machine Learning in Visualization and Sonification; Morphology; Biotextile
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.
