Or

A. When it isn't in the editorial slot………please see text 3! which will provide context to some of the Furthertxt evolutions…

Or

A. When it is actually a Highway Code

Sometimes no matter how well you think you know the route you are going to take, no matter how many times you have traversed that route before, or how much planning you have put in, something can still get in the way, or alter your path irrevocably.

In May, I broke my nose.

I failed to correctly negotiate a path I take numerous times a week, and fell over an obstacle which I should firstly have seen, and if not seen, I should instinctively have known it was there through routine and experience. Since this mishap, I have had to renegotiate all the paths I take. I am nervous of falling again, so I walk over-cautiously. I am unable to work when I feel like it because injuries dictate my schedule and finally, and most importantly, am obsessed with alternate routes, alternate routes which had previously seemed impossible….

In this much delayed edition of Furthertxt, I am promoting route awareness, not least to assist my own poor navigational skills, but also after a year of Furthertxt, to take stock and look to the future.

Dyske Suematsu questions whether there is rather a psycho-philoso-geographical element to new media theory that causes theorists to almost solely rely on Western philosophies and modes of understanding to direct their critiques, and with our current world political situation, whether it is about time we looked wider than our own belief systems? Perhaps it is GPS in reverse, global un-positioning or global mis-positioning or global re-positioning?

Oliver Ressler is concerned with how activism has a role to play in creating paths outside of the hierarchies in which we are embedded, and whether activist art might visually and theoretically map the new terrain.

Nick Lambert, who returns with a second instalment, wants to clear some of the obstacles in the way of a history of computer art, and avoid future mishaps.

I am looking forward to reading the winning entries to the TrAce and Writers for the Future New Media Article Writing Competition, in which entrants were encouraged to find new ways of discussing our networked world and hope you look forward to Furthertxt's own forays into such realms…

Someone whose life has taken a much more horrific diversion than my own is the artist Steve Kurtz, who urgently needs the support of the arts community, please see the website dedicated to the legal problems he has been thrust into in the wake of his wife's tragic death, and do what you can!

Charlotte

:~)

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