Sympoiesis refers to a mode of making or becoming that is not self-contained, but produced through mutual relations among multiple beings. In ecological thinking, it is closely aligned with forms of symbiosis in which life is sustained through interdependence rather than isolated individuality. Examples include the intimate mutualism between plant roots and fungi, the dependence of many corals on intracellular algae, the need of many flowering plants for insect pollination, and the role of gut microbial communities in animal digestion. These examples present ecosystems as collaborative, co-evolving assemblages rather than as systems reducible to competitive survival alone.
The term also carries a critical edge. Entanglement is not simply something to celebrate or preserve as inherently good. Networks built through plantation economies, slavery, railways, ports, neoliberal globalization, and platform capitalism have expanded human-technological-ecological entanglements while also intensifying exploitation, commodification, and capital accumulation. For this reason, thinking with sympoiesis requires attention not only to connection, but also to exclusion and asymmetry.
In the context of net art, a related concern appears in the way works are maintained over time: to keep a work moving, it may be reshaped into a form that is easier to continue, so that no one is formally obliged while someone is still willing to take responsibility for it.