COKE IS IT
Matt Kenyon
In the 1981 Coca-Cola advertising campaign, “Coke Is It,” an impossibly handsome cast can be seen simulating prosaic acts of daily life that pose the television audience with images of reality that seemingly relate to their own. The actors, assisted by a80s-era narrative jingle, exude relaxation during a massage and emphasize their frustration by kicking the door of an over heated car. In each scene, whether it is seen or not, Coca-Cola is presented by an implicit understanding that Coca-Cola is “real.” Better yet, Coca-Cola augments the real.
Coke Is It, a work that can best be described as robotic performance art, uses an artificial surrogate to mirror advertising tactics. In the piece, a hex-crawler robot is deployed to simulate beverage consumption by traversing the gallery floor in search of soda. Engineered with an onboard camera, the robot—named C3 in a jesting nod to Coca-Cola’s failed low-carb soda, C2—detects puddles of spilled soft drink and obediently proceeds to their location. Upon arrival, it sucks the soda through a straw connected to an electrical pump, consuming the spill until no liquid remains. Then, the robot sprays itself, releasing the cola onto its protective skin. The acidic compounds in Coke eventually corrode the umbrella skin and find their way to the robot’s circuitry, causing C3 to break down.
Stripped of emotive expression, the robot experiences its consumption in purely empirical terms. C3 seeks Coca-Cola. C3 finds Coca-Cola. C3 ingests Coca-Cola. And then, C3 dies. The performance amplifies the true effects of relentless consumption, highlighting the absurdity of behavior patterns performed in accordance with lifestyle desires. In the process, it inverts the logic of advertising. In commercials, human actors invoke an artificial, and ultimately unattainable life. In Coke Is It, a form of artificial life — the robot — reveals this lifestyle’s very real effects.
