Abstract

This editorial introduction frames the Special Issue ‘Synthetic Sentience: Relational Intelligence and the Politics of Perception’ by situating the collected contributions within contemporary debates on artificial intelligence, artistic research and more-than-human agency. It argues that sentience can no longer be understood as an internal property of bounded subjects, whether human or artificial, but must instead be approached as a relational, distributed and processual condition emerging across assemblages of humans, machines, organisms, environments and artefacts. Drawing on the diverse practices and theoretical positions represented in the issue, the introduction foregrounds recurring concerns with relationality, temporality, materiality and ethics, highlighting how artistic practice functions as both medium and method for exploring synthetic sentience. Rather than seeking definitive criteria for sentience, the contributions collectively examine how awareness, agency and responsibility are enacted through interaction, mediation and transformation. In doing so, the issue positions art as a critical site for negotiating the cultural, ecological and ethical implications of synthetic and hybrid forms of intelligence in an era of planetary computation.