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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 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

  1. Augmenting Morphology: The Artificialis Historia- Bio-visualization, Machine Learning and Museum Narratives
  2. Augmenting Morphology: A Sonic Cabinet of Curiosity (Ircam Forum, Paris)
  3. Augmenting Hybrid Specimen: Bacterial Communication 
  4. Affinitive Cellulose: Bacterial Cellulose in Fashion (Textile Circulatory Centre, RCA)
  5. Imaginary Landscape/ Touch The Biofilm (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

Augmenting Morphology in Sonic Cabinet of Curiosities
(IRCAM 2022, Paris)

Royal College of Art | IRCAM 2022, Paris | 2022


In the project “Augmenting Morphology, a Sonic Cabinet of Curiosities”, a soundscape is able to bridge fiction and reality. The artist investigates new insights into spectromophology and biological morphology in micro. The aesthetics of electroacoustic narratives and bio-visualization emerge from a speculative acoustic territory from a Wunderkammer (Cabinet of Curiosities) of a fictional post-specimen museum.


The collections of unknown and fantasy objects are AI-generated specimens based on real microscopic images observed by the artist. The artist explores the potential role of machine learning and computer-assisted composition in the process of curating, analyzing and generating the sonic, visual and textual variations associated with fictional specimens.


The audiences get to perceive and build the knowledge of fictional specimens when processing and fusing multiple modalities simultaneously, particularly in this project, is the engagement of vision and audio. By exploring the multimodal storytelling and combinatory creativity of a series of specimens and sound effects, sensory information begins to flow, migrate and further create novel enigmatic mood and memory. Noise is constantly generated under the collision of synthesizer, code, image data.


The establishment of spectral spatiality is contributed from granular synthesis and microsound in composition. Within an immersive audiovisual environment, the audiences observe the Cabinet of Curiosities included AI-generated microbes and sound objects. This project intends to envelop data sonification, sound synthesis and digital image analysis of machine learning via open-source computer vision, Wekinator, and MAX/MSP etc.



Research 

Microsound, spectromorphology, motion “microscopy”
Mark

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