Shontelle Xintong Cai

Bio-inspired Design in Relation to :

• Fictionality and Sensuality  
• Abstraction and Narration
• Digitalization and Re-materialization

In this project, I examine how the interspecies hybrids, especially bacteria are able to challenge the human-centred museum environment through machine learning and 3d making.

Key references:

• The Digital Turn: Design in the Era of Interactive Technologies (2013);
• Bio Art: Altered Realities (2015)
• Bio Design: Nature • Science • Creativity(2018)
• Neri Oxman: Mediated Matter: Material Ecology (2020)

During the early stage of project analysis, the critical research-based practices are supported and supervised by professionals in RCA from research ethics assessment to the step-by-step process.

Acknowledgement:

Ethics Check, Communication and Experiments: Nikolet Kostur, Charlotte Jarvis, Dr Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa and Mike Alexander

Tutorial Support: Dr Matt Lewis, Angus Main

Keywords

-Imaginary

-Fluidity/Flexibility

-Microbial Movement/Talk

Purpose

To experience, feel and sense the process, result and imaginative evidence of microbial communication

Target Public Audience:

Who is interested in learning knowledge from experience

Who is interested in exploring human-microbe(/bacteria) and interspecies relationships

Professionals:

Who wants to know how machine learning is

capable of making scientific graphics

Who works in the bio-relevant fields, desiring to know more

about data visualization and public engagement

Special Thanks:

Xintong Tian (tianxintong.jlu@gmail.com)

and

Shuxuan Yang (yangsx99@126.com, University of Leicester, School of Museum Studies)

for professional consultations and feedback in Museum Studies.

In “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 and image data. The establishment of spectral spatiality is contributed by granular synthesis and microsound in composition. Within an immersive audiovisual environment, the audiences observe the Cabinet of Curiosities including AI-generated microbes and sound objects.

This project intends to envelop data sonification, sound synthesis and digital image analysis of machine learning via GAN, open-source computer vision by processing, Wekinator, and MAX/MSP etc. This work had been presented in IRCAM Forum Paris Workshops in March 2022.

"They are ubiquitous and delightful in digital and nature. They burble and harmonize through the unseen realms."

In collaboration with the musician in Lewes Music Group, this work depicts the delicate movement of biofilm with chamber music and data sonification. The artificial hybrids of biofilm are generated and animated by machine learning and visual programming. The original programme of this work is "Pastorale and Fioritura " composed by Lance Mok.

Composer: Lance Mok

Performer: Lance Mok (Piano) & Wong Ka Wing Karen (Flute)

Video & Sound Editor: Shontelle Xintong Cai

In the post-pandemic era, humans have somehow expanded our understanding of microbial agencies, dependencies and relations. The embodied and surrounding microbial territories also show their unique morphologies and properties.

To challenge the limits of the current museological narrative and human-centred view, “Augmenting Hybrid Specimen” investigates the new insights into multispecies ethnography and communication in micro and machine learning. The aesthetics of bio-visualization and multi-modal archive critically emerges on a glimpse of the fictional post-specimen museum.

The artist solidifies microbial-related messages and interspecies communication into fiction and facts, storing them in a speculative cabinet of curiosity and film screening. This collection exhibits hybrid artefacts and code-generated data of quorum sensing (bacterial cell-cell communication), which diversely portrays the temporal and spatial distribution of the microbial community in the artist's neighbourhood.

With a distribution system of specimens and sensorial information built around the microbiome, it aims to shift the subjectivity and objectivity between human and unseen microbial communities in museums. The reinterpreted specimen and their narratives went through multiple iterations in biological sampling, bio-materialising, publishing, visual programming, and sonifying image-based data.

The fictional experience provokes a new discussion of symbiotic mutualisms and a better understanding and appreciation of the microbial self.

The morphology of biofilms narrates the diversity of quorum sensing (bacterial cell-cell communication). These dried SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) samples are naturally dyed and displayed as the prototypes of nanofibrillar biomaterial (bacterial cellulose). They represent the bio-based product during bacterial communication, showing the possible collaborative future between humans and bacteria in sustainability, synthetic biology and ecology. As a critical practice, these collections are supported by Natural Matters-Future Material Lab, RCA.

Special Thanks to

Lingxi Hua by natural dye instructions;

Ziyi Wang and Alvin by 3D rendering support

In the "Augmenting Morphology: The Artificialis Historia", I investigate the new insights into biological morphology and multispecies ethnography in micro and machine learning. The aesthetics of micro-biopolitical narratives and bio-visualization critically emerge on a glimpse of the fictional post-specimen museum.

The collections of AI-generated specimens are based on microscopic images observed and captured in the ecosystem of London. I intend to engage the audiences to perceive and build relevant knowledge from fictional specimens, documents and dialogues around them, reflecting the power of micro-biopolitics in the post-pandemic era and historical entanglements with non-humans.