Two works featured by the Nungu collective - currently based in-between Bombay India, London England and wwwdot, nungu is a fluid digital entity, an autonomous cultural space, an alternative media site in a constant state of construction, deconstruction, reproduction and re-assemblage. Comprised of a fluid collective of artists and media researchers, engaged primarily in cultural and media orientated research, nungu views the network as a kind of vast extension of the urban, as the material interpenetrated and reproduced informatically, the ultimate expression of a culture drunk on data.
 
 Nick Fry's Literary consequences of corporate life: anecdote, correspondence, image and documentation produced from within the fold of a corporate working environment. 'Graham arrived when I was back at my desk - he hit me on the head with a bacon-avocado-an-mayonaisse baguette. It was a nervous pokey little assault - a compromise between not hitting me too hard so as not to upset me and not disturbing the sodden limb of lard smearing the inside of its plastic sheath'.
 
 A varied collection of agitprop writings, featuring his infamous ironic email shorts 'Sleazy Art Meetings' (sliced stories, art speak, critical philosophies, mixed with text stolen from sex sites on the Internet) and stories, or rather fables touching onhow technology plays on our subconscience, issues of personal freedom, sexual identity, masculinity and politics. Some have termed his stories as cyber-novels. 'I don't mind the term, but I feel that the stories declare life and all its confusions beyond labels and are more about dealing with the issue of transmutation. The site also features 'Critical Text' and 'Poetry/Prose', all worth a visit.
 


Furthertxt Editor
On the offline version of this site, whilst it was under construction, (and Matt Catlow the site designer was admirably putting up with my ramblings), to make the site ‘look’ up and running in this very editorial slot, he put ‘blah blah blah’ followed by ‘text goes here’ repeated 30 or so times.

Now firstly this made me think that the texts we will be featuring on this site will be so interesting that nobody will ever read my editorial. I might just as well put ‘blah, blah, blah’. And then I started to wonder about post-modern discussions on the death of the author, as I don’t quite recall anyone mentioning the death of the editor, in fact, quite the contrary. This might be because the Internet not only introduced a plethora of new ways to edit but it disseminated these abilities as infinitely as it recreated them. This might suggest a death of sorts; how is the editor a revered role if we can all be one. However if we can all be editors, doesn’t this make it even more important: authorship with out the authority and art with added autonomy!

Text is an important part of net art as it is often conceptual and therefore very linguistic and discursive. Artists produce in a network like a permanent open studio, and discussion goes on verbally and textually as well as visually. This made it a natural step for furtherfield to designate a whole site to text-based discussion.

You will note we have made a random delve into our archives to give you a taste of the texts furtherfield has presented in the past…to aptly constitute our first ‘back’ issue. So in a way, as we have an existing archive of interesting critique, we almost didn’t need Matt’s other place holder text, but it does serve as a great reminder:

Firstly, please get writing and submit now because ‘text goes here’ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but also, like computers, language is a tool, a tool which makes us humans, so…
‘text goes here’ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Charlotte