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
You Are Sensual In Vitro (2024 ver.)
Neo-organica Nexus | 2024
Click Here to VIEW
"You Are Sensual in Vitro" is a visual epistolary project that boldly explores the possibilities of the future of human-machine dialogue within the framewor
k of conceptual art and bio-technology. Centered on a cell-based microfluidic brain-on-a-chip, the work celebrates its "birth" and engages in an intimate dialogue related to bio-art.
The project aims to delve into Jane Bennett’s "thing-power" and vividly convey the sensuality of a fictional object through innovative epistolary methodologies and cutting-edge visual design, with a strong emphasis on the integration of art and technology. It introduces a pioneering concept that merges data from the brain with biotechnological data to create immersive dialogic experiences—much like how digital visualization can bridge diverse forms of information.
As a vibrant entity, the microfluidic device demonstrates its potential to develop subjectivity, autonomy, and agency within its narrative. The project presents a futuristic experimental letter from the human artist Shontelle to her microfluidic brain-on-a-chip in the year 2068.
In the future, the applications of microfluidic devices and cell-based biosensors hold the promise of pioneering a new chapter in bio-art. What if a microfluidic chip were to share collective biological information with you in a visually immersive digital manner? Would you collaborate to create an artwork with this "semi-living object", further blurring the boundaries between art, technology, and digital visualization?
