What would possess a man to pierce a hole in his right cheek and run a barcode scanner through it? or get a robot to drink coke until it explodes?
One man's done it all and he's in New Zealand to show off his work.
Artist Matt Kenyon has run a series of cables through a hole in his cheek, connecting a video camera in his mouth to a barcode scanner.
Kenyon got the idea after he saw the way research company AC Nielson targets the spending patterns of his fellow Americans, by issuing barcode scanners to families and having them rescan all the things they buy.
"What we did instead of documenting our individual pattern, we took this device apart broke it apart and built it into something else," Kenyon explains. "Instead of documenting the things that are in my kitchen, we take it out to the streets."
The 'Consumer Index' is one of many works that the professor of new media is showing while in New Zealand.
In his 'Coke Is It' piece, he gets his hand-built robot to suck coke through a straw then spray it onto its umbrella. The umbrella ultimately wears out leaking into the robot and then it dies. "What we wanted to do is create a dramatised play of the effects of consumerism run wild," Kenyon says. "I mean there are countless studies that show today's school children can recognise brands before they can recognise religious figures or heads of state and things like that."
Another piece is a sheet of paper which reveal micro-printed text, which name the 10,000 Iraq civilians who have died since the American led invasion in 2003.
It all makes for a rather serious viewing experience, but Kenyon insists he is more of an artist than an activist. He drinks coke and eats burgers - albeit in the name of art.
Kenyon's next project involves housing statistics and clouds. But while he's in New Zealand, he'll be scanning our products and looking around for more ideas.