The distinctive practices of arts and cultural production and issues of aesthetics in relation to art and ontology in contemporary media cultures raise important questions for new materialisms. Because of their distinctly human-centred traditions, arts and humanities face a big challenge, in developing the kinds of non human-centric understandings of reality and the human that are so desperately needed in today’s technological, ecological, natural­–cultural terrains. This collection of essays makes a significant and wide-ranging contribution to arts and humanities perspectives on the methodological, analytical and ethico-political development of new materialisms.