Big Gulp (2023) is a new media artwork that begs inexhaustible questions with just as many answers. The piece lives in a dynamic state, moving through different phases and variations with time, proposing different veins and views of an enigma. An invitation to a comfortable seat and a tasty beverage, a command for attention to performance, a sentence to death. What are we to make of so many mixed messages? It hammers on irony, the idea of reclining in old sparky and downing a critically large cup of iced coffee, extra milk with four sugars. The hazy foam of digital distortion harkens to a ”more barbaric” time, and yet the savagery of the internet turns over more undiscovered stones of human quirks and secrets every day. Even crime and death has been commoditized, repackaged as true crime with orchestral scores in bodybag plastic to be ripped open and microwaved by you. There is no longer a moment of silence. The bastardization of tradition made anew in a nuanced middle finger, italicized with the internet punk’s glitched middle finger.
