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Shontelle
Xintong
Cai




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
  1. Trillium: Transcultural Alchemy of Healing (Cultural Amalgamates, on-going)

|| 2024
Visual Impairement, Machine Learning, Exhibit Design
  1. Chromosonic Scrolls- Exhibit Design (on-going)
  2. Visual Echo- Experience research & Design, Information Symbiote  (on-going)
  3. Participatory Digital v.s Natural Remedies  (on-going research)
  4. You Are Sensual in Vitro (online exhibition ver.)

|| 2023
Bio-material Visualization, Experience Design of Bio-material, Regenerative Design Research

  1. Affinitive Cellulose: Narration of bio-material with coffee ground
  2. Indigenous botanical healing in digital realm (on-going)

|| 2022 
Machine Learning in Visualization and Sonification; Morphology; Biotextile

  1. Augmenting Morphology: The Artificialis Historia- Bio-visualization, Machine Learning and Museum Narratives
  2. Augmenting Morphology: A Sonic Cabinet of Curiosity (Participated in IRCAM Forum, Paris)
  3. Augmenting Hybrid Specimen: Bacterial Communication 
  4. Affinitive Cellulose research and prototype: Bacterial Cellulose in Fashion (Textile Circulatory Centre, RCA)
  5. Imaginary Landscape/Touch The Biofilm (Projection Mapping, Improvision, Collaborated with Lewes Music Group)

|| 2021
Techno-ecology; Epistolary Narrative; Bio-Data

  1. Deep Ecology and The Sublime- Online Workshop
  2. A Digital Utopia For The Institution- Spaculative Curation Plan
  3. The Tail Market- Synthetic Anatomy
  4. Countermeasure- Forum Recorder
  5. You Are Sensual in Vitro: A Visual Letter of Microfluidic Brain-on-a-chip
  6. Reciprocal Symphony
  7. Sound Commission at Stella Papaioannou’s Project “The Sound Between Us” 
  8. The Artificial C3 Plant Project


|| 2020
Posthuman Ecologies; Bio-hacking; Biological System

  1. Launch A Dream- Data sonification of a
    Stratospheric Balloon Flight, Instrument Hacking, Autopoiesis     (Ircam Forum, Paris)
  2. Dear Queen St - Locative Ambient Soundscape
  3. Posthuman Fungi Spirituality
  4. White Noise- Conceptual Visual Design For Monthly Sound Event 


|| 2019 
Posthuman Ecologies; Bio-hacking; Design Fiction

  1. Posthuman Who-Posthuman Embodiment Research
  2. Correlate You- Interactive Experience Model Design With Quantum Physics, Mind-uploading Room
  3. “Botani”- Plant Science in Education 
  4. An Orgy of Voyeurs- Novelty Seeking Mechanism
  5. Comate- Mental Health Tracking 
  6. Synthetic Dreaming - Design For Debate
  7. AI Celebrity- Design Fictions, Installation

4. Lgr5+ stem cell





Responded to Hans Clever’s Stem Cell Research | Moving Image Collaboration with Wenqing Yao / 2021

A Dining experience of Lgr5+ stem cell and its organoid Intestinal dietary simulation


In "Lgr5+”, the remote dialogue of dining experiences intends to reflect the growth of Lgr5+ intestinal stem cells and its expansion in vitro by narrating the process of intestinal dietary. Inspired by the food sharing culture and eating habits, the project aims to ask the viewers to critique their roles as eaters and the diseases like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) caused by certain eating habits. In the narration design, the participants are considered as the Lgr5+ stem cells, and their eating process is how the stem cell works and the microbiota ecology look like in the simulative gut organoid.

The work is in progress, not available to preview online



Research References






Work
Mark

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