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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
UK-AADA IAADC International Art & Design Competition (UK)

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, Collective Ecological Memory)
  2. In Cyanotoxin's Wake: A Visual Poem on Toxin and Freshwater (Climate Change, Ethical Ecological Boundaries)

|| 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

Trillium: Transcultural and Sensual Alchemy of Healing






Cultural Amalgamates, Collective Ecological Memory  | 2025

Click Here to VIEW


Rooted in the trillium’s practices as natural remedies and myths, “Trillium: Transcultural and Sensual Alchemy of Healing” is a video installation intending to sensually unfolds the essence of the trillium as a sensorial symphony. From the past, present and future threads of human activities, the moving image vividly depicts its profound capacity to heal both body and mind.


By drawing inspiration from the poetic themes that explore the trillium's connection to diverse elements such as food, medicine, microscopic life, garden sanctuaries, museological evidence and cosmic seeds, this immersive video installation weaves rich sensual experiences and a bridge of Chinese and Canadian Indigenous cultures. At the beginning, this work creates a transcultural dialogue celebrating shared reverence for nature’s curative power. Both the Chinese legend of Shennong, the divine farmer who discovered herbal medicine, as well as the Ojibwe people’s oral traditions converge in their reverence for the trillium as a symbol of spiritual belief, uniting these geographically distant cultures across hemispheres. Later, it gradually unfolds the trillium's beauty and significance, from the microscopic details of its cells and pollen to the grandeur of its presence in the garden-like virtual landscapes. The futuristic exhibition of trillium blurs the lines between the digital and the real. In the end, the trillium seeds return back to nature, the universe, echoing the process of life in macro and micro.


This work reimagines healing as a collective and interactive ritual. Visitors actively participate in co-creating "healing scrolls" through their experiences and meditations within the exhibition space. The immersive moving images not only advocate for ecological stewardship but also promote cross-cultural empathy. It posits nature as a universal language that has the power to unite humanity and technology, all in the service of collective well-being.
Mark

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