In an increasingly corporate digital media landscape where the Internet is transforming into a controlled environment built for profit and consumption, large companies such as Meta, Apple, Microsoft, and Google are purchasing smaller companies’ products and rebranding them as their own. From Apple’s acquisition of Beats to Meta’s purchase of Oculus, Instagram, WhatsApp and more, the rise in corporate suffocation of innovation has lead to greed, a stifling of creative freedom, and conglomerate attitudes throughout the tech world. “Surprise Acquisition” is a media artwork that aims to uncover the seemingly randomness of corporate takeovers by equating the arcade “claw” machine with the act of purchasing companies. Similar to the early days of the “dot-com” revolution with companies buying up domain names, the de facto approach today is for companies to gain enough capitol to buy their rivals and integrate these products into their own. “Surprise Acquisition” serves as a reminder of these practices and how they have gotten out of control as corporate technological territorial practice rolls on.
_light.svg){kind=logo}
