FESTIVAL IZIS

“The most powerful media organisations of the twenty-first century will be thermal. The circulation of images, sounds, videos, and texts will depend on the extensive heating and cooling mode. Data and networks, much like the people they connect, will become increasingly fragile. If it is either too hot or too cold, the platforms will collapse. Digital infrastructure – data centers, network exchanges, and fiber optic cables – will drain the planet’s energy to create a stable thermal environment – not for people, but for information.”

Nicole Starosielski, Media Hot and Cold, 2022

The 13th edition of the IZIS festival thematises information noise and explores the (in)ability to communicate in the age of communication capitalism. It inquires what happens to messages in a mass of post-truths, misinformation, fake news, as well as hyperinflation of images and content created by machines, such as bots or AI. How do rumors, ads, recommendations, viral videos, private and public footage from war zones, or images of disasters affect a message circulating in the same communications space? Perhaps this depends on whose perspective we understand the message from. From a human perspective, the content of the message is influenced by various cultural, linguistic and other factors; when it comes to machines, however, this is all only a matter of calculation. According to one of the first models of communication, the Shannon-Weaver model, background noise contextualises information, and information needs noise for successful transmission. In other words – there is no information without noise. At the same time, receiving information or perception is not the same as accurately understanding the outside world. As artist and writer Trevor Pagelan points out, “/…/ And the gap between what we sense and what we perceive can be filled with all sorts of prompt injections and adversarial hallucinations. …reality is rather a complex mess of the material, the imaginal, the perceptual, and the imperceptible—all of which can be manipulated.” What happens to meaning if the message circulates in an environment in which the nev forms of media, as Pagelan writes, “/…/ prod and persuade, modulate and manipulate, shaping worldviews and actions to induce us into believing what they want us to believe, and to extract value and exert influence.“?

End of Message or EoM is the standard label for the end of e-correspondence, a label for a message that does not expect a response. In the context of this year’s IZIS, therefore, the End of Message becomes a metaphor for broken, meaningless and interrupted communication, which at the same time does not accompany the dialogue and does not need an addressee in order to exist. The endless proliferation of content that may never reach the addressee only illustrates the subordination of communication to economic logic. Quantity overrides quality. The mechanical representation involves everyone – from man to bot and generative artificial intelligence; at the same time, one imitates the other, without actually knowing who is talking to whom. In a hyper-profitable environment, the rotting of the Internet corpse is felt, adapting to the priorities of individual platforms, which ultimately affect the formation of digital subjectivity. Although we are all fully aware of the images and records of the genocide in Palestine, political action in preventing it has also been paralyzed, and information about that merely exists. It does not expect any action to be taken in this regard. But, as artist and writer James Bridle writes in the book New Dark Age, “/…/ information and violence are completely and inextricably linked, and the technologies that are supposed to exert control over the world accelerate the use of information as a weapon. Although the consequences are visible everywhere, we continue to attach excessive value to information that locks us into repeated cycles of violence, destruction, and death. “

Ironically, the material consequences of the communication infrastructure threaten the fundamental conditions of life, precisely because the sphere of data and information is based on the abstract time and space of the capital. Not only does access to cheap energy presuppose the possibility of interpersonal conflict, but it also results in a huge carbon footprint, pollution, digital or electronic waste, and raw material mining. Therefore, the “end of the message” addressed by the festival also contains a material layer that enables the message. This time, it does not address the material conditions of information production, but instead unfolds different aspects of understanding and communicating from different human and multi-human perspectives.

– Irena Borić, curator of IZIS

References:

James Bridle, New Dark Age. Technology and End of Future (Verso, 2018)

Rosa Menkman, The Glitch Moment(um) (Institute of Network Cultures, 2011)

Trevor Pagelan, “Society of the Psyop, Part 2: AI, Mind Control, and Magic,” e-flux Journal, no. 148, October, 2024, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/148/631017/society-of-the-psyop-part-2-ai-mind-control-and-magic

Trevor Pagelan, “Society of the Psyop, Part 3: Cognition and Chaos,” e-flux Journal, no. 149, November, 2024, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/149/639555/society-of-the-psyop-part-3-cognition-and-chaos 

Hito Steyerl, Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat (Verso Books, 2025)