The study addressed in this 'book' puts forward a project that is twofold. Firstly, it discusses the conceptual basis within which it would be possible for the construction of a 'neosentient' system, a machine endowed with the capacity to perceive or feel things in the world, as if manifesting a proto-form of (artificial) consciousness. Secondly, it hypothesizes about the rising of benevolence through the interaction/intra-action, between 'neosentient' machines and their environment, which include us, human beings, as inhabitants. The manuscript tackles its task in a very particular manner as it interrelates a constellation of ideas in order to address key research agendas on the fields of language, aesthetics, philosophy, biology, physics, science, technology, mind and consciousness to name some. The goal of the book is not to define the structure within which such an engine could be built, it does not bring into light the blueprint of such an, but it nails down key concepts from a broad range of topics, mapping a path for future research, reinforcing this way the sense of feasibility of its enterprise. In doing so, the book illuminates trajectories, ramifications or even non-directly correlated ideas that would pass unnoticed to the reader's mind, were not by the authors generously bringing into play sets of key scholars, theories, discoveries and even speculative ideas.

Computer-based environmental meaning is potentially examined and explored through the authorship, inter-authorship, and operative experiential examination of a diverse set of media- elements and media-processes, within an operative, generative computational environment. The media that becomes evocative within this techo-poetic virtual environment includes digital video, digital still images, 3D digital objects, 3D animations, digital spoken and written text, digital music/noise - sound objects, and digital texture maps - both still and moving. Each media-element could be said to convey its own field of meaning. Varying combinations of these fields of meaning are experienced through fleeting electronic/environmental relations. The mind-set of the participant represents another active field, and becomes dynamically involved in the construction of meaning. It is through the combination and recombination of these evocative digital fields of meaning, as experienced by an engaged participant, that a new form of poetics can emerge - Recombinant Poetics.