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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

You Are Sensual in Vitro: A Visual Letter 
For The Cell-based Microfluidic Brain-on-a-chip





Royal College of Art | Echoes of Science ONLINE Exhibition | 2021
“You Are Sensual in Vitro” is a visual epistolary document to the cell-based microfluidic brain-on-a-chip, celebrating its birth and having an intimate conversation related to bio-art.


This project intends to explore Jane Bennett’s “thing-power” and depict the sensuality of a fictional object via epistolary methodologies and visual design.


As a vibrant being, the microfluidic device shows its possibilities of developing subjectivity, autonomy and agency in narration. The project presents a experimental letter from the human artist Shontelle to her microfluidic brain-on-a-chip in 2068.

In the future, the applications of microfluidics devices and cell-based biosensors could have the potential to create a new episode of bio-art. What if your microfluidic chip shares the collective biological information with you? Will you make a collaborative artwork with the “semi-living object”?


There are two ways to enjoy the project, with (Click to explore): pure audio description or visual letter (moving image)

Research 

Inspired by Open-source, community-driven microfluidics with Metafluidics David Kong. Nature Biotechnology 35, 523–529 (2017)

I started researching and gave a presentation in relation to the possibilities of microfluidic devices and bio-art practice. My expectation was to create a futuristic proposal to work with the new technologies in the bio-art field.

Writing & Audio Recording

Wording pratice by several thumbnails
Tonality practice and perform as a piece of poetry





Visual system exploration & Video Editing
Creating video clips of droplets, membranes, and channels by various 3D modelling, creative coding and motion graphics techniques.
Mark

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