Ignacio Nieto

This article examines the policies that have transformed water into a market commodity in Chile. Graciela Muñoz, an artist born and raised in one of the country’s areas affected by the drought produced by these policies, travelled to Chilean Patagonia to record the sound of the Baker River, and transferred its sounds to 28 small loudspeakers installed on the dry riverbed of the Petorca River, near her hometown. Through this soundscape, Muñoz temporarily recovered a lost experience where a river that does not exist anymore appears again, in sound, superimposing the past over a uncertain present.

Illustrated with full colour images, this chapter presents a detailed review of art-science manifestations that display diverse purposes and were produced in different historical periods and contexts. An analytical framework is then proposed to help us understand how art-science integrations move from the authority and predominance of one or the other discipline (art or science) using different modes of circulation depending on the purpose of the work. Finally, a categorization of art-science works that exhibit this spectrum of purposes is proposed and illustrated with examples.

In this chapter, interviews conducted with most of the authors of the selected artist-science artworks were analysed and organised according to five categories. These categories emerged from their reflections on the premises, potential and limits of art-science integration. Their accounts point in the direction of a wide range of topics that are relevant to how humans think about themselves, its relation with other beings and entities, and complex global issues, amongst others. Their reflections also expose their view on the role of the arts and the sciences in society today.

This book delves into the long-standing human aspiration to combine art and science. In six chapters, The Art-Science Symbiosis outlines new approaches to understand current scientific practice in general and art-science in particular, showcasing how contemporary art can provide a unique perspective on the meaning and potential of collaboration. With more than a hundred full colour images, The Art-Science Symbiosis serves as a resource for researchers interested in the art-science integration, as well as a general reference for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work. In the book, twenty-two works have been selected based on their inherent merits and for the emergent knowledge that their art-science integration produces. These works have sparked novel questions, ideas and curiosity amongst scientists and artists alike which, we hope, will promote further dialogue not only amongst them but with the general public, inspiring a process that may lead to diverse, complex, and promising results with real-world consequences we have as yet to uncover. The Key messages of the book are:● Contemporary art is a powerful space of dialogue between science and the public● Interdisciplinary work based on symmetrical collaboration promotes groundbreaking results● Artistic inquiry can lead to new understanding of scientific exploration● Art-science practice could be started using a simple methodology.

We discuss the effectiveness of mediated communication (internet communication via a computer tablet) and tacit engagement in a Project on mental health. The project is aimed at improving the wellbeing of adult women living with chronic mental disorders in long-term psychiatric internment. The computer tablets act as "portals" to provide access and conatct with the outside world for patients who have poor (if any) external social support. This support includes a patient-centred psycho-social care, and accompanying clinical and pharmaceutical treatment. Both patients and their relatives accepted the benefits of internet mediation, for very different reasons. For the patient, this is a flash of contact with humanity, and for the relatives the internet communication this proved to be an alternative to the need for physical proximity. As some patients had no relatives or friends to communicate (even remotely) with the outside world, and because there is a school next door to the clinic, we visualized that the communication between these two communities could provide both a therapeutic and poetic act of learning and compassion. The electronic portal could serve as a virtual bridge between two forbidden domains. Although awareness of students of the nearby school was raised about mental health, the use of internet mediation devoid of physical proximity made the students suspicious of the goal of the mediation. From the patient's side, however, each contact was an instance of joy. Several issues were raised from this exercise.

Cybernetics is a science characterized by the utopian search for new relationships between different areas of knowledge. After the Second World War, the best-known references in Western academia were Norbert Wiener’s approaches to this new discipline. However, there is another little-known hemisphere of this development that remains understudied and we claim is key for its history which refers to the pioneering work of scientists, engineers and cultural practitioners in Latin America, as well as the materialization of specific experiences that lead us to reflect on the role that some regional milestones could have had in the global context. This volume of AI & Society covers points of view that were structured in the various most emblematic stages of these trajectories with the participation of agents that went beyond the assimilation and interpretation of external models, transforming themselves into fundamental and pioneering experiences, among others, the work of Mexican scientist Arturo Rosenblueth, or the impact of the concept of Autopoiesis. Through this article we introduce the outcome of the research—presented in great length in the contributions of this volume—on some of the main stages and trends that constituted the evolution of cybernetics in Latin America. The particular contributions of the authors in this issue have helped to reconstituting these contexts while developing a continuous horizon which also explores future practices.

We discuss the effectiveness of mediated communication (internet communication via a computer tablet) and tacit engagement in a Project on mental health. The project is aimed at improving the wellbeing of adult women living with chronic mental disorders in long-term psychiatric internment. The computer tablets act as "portals" to provide access and conatct with the outside world for patients who have poor (if any) external social support. This support includes a patient-centred psycho-social care, and accompanying clinical and pharmaceutical treatment. Both patients and their relatives accepted the benefits of internet mediation, for very different reasons. For the patient, this is a flash of contact with humanity, and for the relatives the internet communication this proved to be an alternative to the need for physical proximity. As some patients had no relatives or friends to communicate (even remotely) with the outside world, and because there is a school next door to the clinic, we visualized that the communication between these two communities could provide both a therapeutic and poetic act of learning and compassion. The electronic portal could serve as a virtual bridge between two forbidden domains. Although awareness of students of the nearby school was raised about mental health, the use of internet mediation devoid of physical proximity made the students suspicious of the goal of the mediation. From the patient's side, however, each contact was an instance of joy. Several issues were raised from this exercise.