Coke Is It
2004 / electrical and miscellaneous
parts, robotic assembly, pbasic

In this artwork, the routine destruction we do to our bodies,
mitigated through corporate mass media, is comically
expressed through a robot named C3 (parodying Coca Cola's
low-carb product C2). C3 is a hex-crawler robot, outfitted
with a CMUcam, enabling it with the ability to search and
find puddles of Coca Cola placed on the gallery floor. When
C3 finds a puddle of Coke, it sucks the beverage up through
an electrical pump, and then sprays it across itself. The
acidic compounds in Coke eventually eats through the robot’s
skin, finding its way to the circuitry, causing it to break
down. The robot is designed to search and consume until it
kills itself. Companies such as Coca Cola deploy marketing
strategies that infuse culture with a sense of well-being and
elevated self-worth, contradicting the actual benefits of the
consumable product.