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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

Reciprocal Symphony






Royal College of Art | Echoes of Science ONLINE Exhibition | 2021

Reciprocal Symphony depicts a corner of the artificial landscape consisting of the beneficiaries of reciprocity in a natural environment via installation and soundscape. The vitality of objects and interspecies interactions are highly explored in fields of fundamental science and biotechnology. The installation displays two reciprocal connections: flower v.s pollinator, and human v.s. bio-material regenerated from organic food waste. This project intends to present the interspecies relationship, reconnecting humankind with the natural agencies. The close studies of floral morphology and bioregeneration technology are applied to create the vibrant objects and symphonic poem in the installation.


Closely supported by Yaoyao Meng, an award winning interdisciplinary designer, member of BioID lab at Bartlett UCL.
Mark

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