NXS is a research platform and publication initiated by the Amsterdam based design studio Goys&Birls. Its content surrounds the exploration of ‘the self’ in the digital age. Each issue features texts and images from several contributors, each reflecting and directing the narrative in an inductive, free-associative form. In their own words, the editors of NXS describe the journal’s second issue as such:
“The second issue of NXS, entitled Synthetic Selves, centres on how the self is understood, whether we have a complete agency in constructing ourselves and what kind of images of ourselves are we broadcasting. Online environments are playgrounds for our identities and places for becoming the other. At face value, online platforms seem to promise us the opportunity to become anyone we want. Yet what happens online has consequences in the physical world. And what happens online is supported by the physical systems in which we grow up and live. Technology not only mediates the narratives of our daily lives, it shapes them.”
The journal continues deconstructing self-image in the contemporary era and features interviews and extensive texts on levels of interactivity between the physical and online worlds (and beyond).