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.
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Recent Selected Awards & Exhibitions:
2026
Fête des Caractères Chinois 2026, La Mairie du 13e Arrondissement, Paris
2025
Art Fund Dubai, Shortlist (Finalist notified in December; UAE)
PREMIO ROCA (Spain)
UK-AADA IAADC International Art & Design Competition (UK)
London Design Festival- 52HZ Echo, Gallery House, London
Art Fund Dubai, Exhibition in the Paris and Al Shindagha Museum (Dubai) (TBD)
Oriental Odyssey, Perfect World Digital Art, Outernet London, London
FaB 2025 -Fringe Art Bath(Human-Machine Co-creation), Bath
2024
The G-CROSS Creative Award (UK)
The North American Applied Art and Design Competition (CANADA)
2023
British Ecology Design Award (UK)
SGADC (Singapore)
2022
Royal College of Art (RCA) 2022 in Collection with Good Vibration, Robots Has Feelings Too, and Make it Last categories
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
|| 2025Experience Design, Art therapy, Post-human Bio-aesthetics
|| 2025
Participatory Design, Experience Design, Art therapy
- Trillium: Transcultural Alchemy of Healing (Cultural Amalgamates, Collective Ecological Memory)
- In Cyanotoxin's Wake: A Visual Poem on Toxin and Freshwater (Climate Change, Ethical Ecological Boundaries)
-
Aquatic Respire: A Water Ode to Justice and Symbiosis
|| 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
VIVRE EN SYMBIOSE AVEC LA ROSE:
L’AMOUR ET LE SOI
(Fête des caractères chinois 2026, Paris)
Festival du Caractère Chinois de Paris, la mairie du 13e arrondissement| 2026
Plant anatomy; 3D Mediacal Illustration; Digital Media
L'œuvre 《Vivre en symbiose avec la rose: L’Amour et le Soi》 prend pour inspiration
centrale les caractéristiques de la formation du caractère chinois "玫瑰" (rose). Dans le
contexte de l'ère post-humaine, elle interprète en profondeur la trajectoire progressive
des émotions de l'amour et sa signification essentielle. Dans la culture chinoise, "玫瑰"
signifie à l'origine une jade rougeâtre à textures, et sa décomposition en radicaux renferme
des significations profondes relatives à la jade, à la texture, à la forme, à l'esprit et à l'âme.
Dans l'expérience audio-visuelle immersive de l'œuvre, la rose vit en symbiose avec la
post-humanité, révélant la logique de construction symbolique de son caractère chinois
ainsi que l'imagination de la reconstruction de la forme vitale et de l'essence de l'amour.
La rose cache l'amour, et l'amour cache le soi authentique. Le radical "⽂" du caractère "玫"
signifie à l'origine la gravure de textures, symbolisant la construction subjective de la
nature par l'humain ; à l'ère post-humaine, cette relation s'est élevée à la co-création
homme-machine, et l'humain est passé d'être un créateur unilatéral à un sujet coexistant
avec des technologies telles que la modélisation 3D, l'IA, la programmation visuelle et la
conception sonore, correspondant à la subjectivité complexe de la post-humanité :
"humain—technologie—environnement". Le radical "⻤" du caractère "瑰" est lié à la
dimension spirituelle et se transforme en un support de mémoire numérique. De ce fait, la
rose devient un intermédiaire reliant la vie carbonée et la mémoire numérique, se
transformant en une entité post-humaine interactive, évolutive, à mémoire virtualisée et à
existence diversifiée, ainsi qu'un microcosme de l'évolution du système symbolique
humain vers un système symbolique de symbiose homme-machine.
L'œuvre utilise l'expérience audio-visuelle immersive comme support pour interpréter le
cœur de l'esthétique biologique, dépassant les limites de la forme physique de la rose, se
concentrant sur sa valeur esthétique et sa signification émotionnelle au-delà du concret, et
construisant une narration unique : "la rose et l'humain coexistent et se reconstruisent en
un nouvel organe". Dans les images, les fibres des pétales de la rose cybernétique
s'enchevêtrent avec les vaisseaux sanguins humains, se contractant et s'étendant au
rythme du cœur, et fusionnent profondément les gènes non naturels de la rose
cybernétique avec les tissus humains originaux, incarnant l'imagination de la
reconstruction de la forme vitale et de l'essence de l'amour.
L'œuvre s'étend du point de vue de la première personne, racontant l'état d'empiètement
et de dépendance mutuelle avec les souvenirs d'amour et les gènes de la rose à l'ère post-
humaine. En tant qu'image concrète d'une création à la frontière de la post-humanité,
l'œuvre explore également les questions frontalières entre le naturel et l'artificiel, le soi et
l'autre, la vie et la non-vie. Elle nous apprend finalement que la forme ultime de l'amour
consiste à dépasser l'image concrète de l'autre, ainsi qu'à trouver et à réveiller le soi
authentique.
The work "Living in Symbiosis with the Rose: Love and Self" takes as its central inspiration the characteristics of the formation of the Chinese character "玫瑰" (rose). In the context of the post-human era, it offers a profound interpretation of the progressive trajectory of the emotions of love and its essential meaning. In Chinese culture, "玫瑰" originally signified a reddish jade with textures, and its decomposition into radicals contains profound meanings related to jade, texture, form, mind, and soul.
In the immersive audiovisual experience of the work, the rose lives in symbiosis with post-humanity, revealing the logic of the symbolic construction of its Chinese character as well as the imagined reconstruction of the vital form and essence of love.
The rose conceals love, and love conceals the authentic self. The radical "⽂" of the character "玫"
originally signified the engraving of textures, symbolizing the subjective construction of nature by humans. In the post-human era, this relationship has evolved into human-machine co-creation, and humans have gone from being unilateral creators to subjects coexistin with technologies such as 3D modeling, AI, visual programming, and sound design, corresponding to the complex subjectivity of post-humanity via human—technology—environment. The radical "⻤" of the character "瑰" is linked to th spiritual dimension and transforms into a support for digital memory. Therefore, the rose becomes an intermediary linking carbon-based life and digital memory, transforming into an interactive, evolving, post-human entity with virtualized memory and diversified existence, as well as a microcosm of the evolution of the symbolic system from human to a symbolic system of human-machine symbiosis.
The work uses immersive audiovisual experience as a medium to interpret the core of biological aesthetics, transcending the physical form of the rose, focusing on its aesthetic value and emotional significance beyond the concrete, and constructing a unique narrative: "the rose and the human coexist and reconstruct each other into a new organ." In the images, the fibers of the cybernetic rose's petal intertwine with human blood vessels, contracting and expanding in rhythm with the heart, and deeply fuse the unnatural genes of the cybernetic rose with original human tissues, embodying the imagined reconstruction of life form and the essence of love.
The work unfolds from a first-person perspective, narrating the state of encroachment and mutual dependence with the memories of love and the genes of the rose in the post-human era. As a concrete image of a creation on the border of post-humanity,
the work also explores the boundary issues between the natural and the artificial, the self and the other, life and non-life. Ultimately, it teaches us that the ultimate form of love consists of transcending the concrete image of the other, as well as finding and awakening the authentic self.
