Dan McCurley

All Money Removed From This Machine

Tags
Visual Communication, Making & Fabrication

This series of relief prints focuses on the principle of maximum value extraction: from the land, our bodies and our ways of thinking. All resources and ways of being are eventually subsumed into the quantification of value – i.e. “all money removed from this machine each night.” Each image in the series contextualizes this overarching principle within specific instances of its application: land valuation maps, sterile rectangular insurance buildings, crowds at a protest, convenience stores and Iowa agribusiness.

Print titled Cash Entry: red block text reading 'All Money Removed From This Machine Each Night' over a blue image of a building entrance
Print titled Gun Sales: red block text reading 'All Money Removed From This Machine Each Night' over a grey photo of a shop window, with a green stamp of a skull on a banknote
Print titled CTRL+F12: red block text reading 'All Money Removed From This Machine Each Night' partly covered by a black silhouette of a building
Print titled Always Open: red block text reading 'All Money Removed From This Machine Each Night' over a pink and grey storefront image with a green skull banknote stamp
Print titled National Processing Center: dark blue block text reading 'All Money Removed From This Machine Each Night' over a blue image of a building and lawn
Print titled Electronic Imaging System: overlapping red and teal layers of block text reading 'All Money Removed From This Machine Each Night' over a pattern of banknotes
Print titled Industrial Complex: red block text reading 'All Money Removed From This Machine Each Night' over blue and grey halftone images of machinery and a keypad
Print titled Community: red block text reading 'All Money Removed From This Machine Each Night' over a grey halftone crowd of people walking
Print titled Scan Loss Low: red block text reading 'All Money Removed From This Machine Each Night' over black and green images of a gated building and trees

Process and Materials

My process for the series involved creating a number of repeatable images and matrices using digital methods: laser printed images, 3D-printed relief plates and laser-etched acrylic plates. I also carved a tofu block stamp that could be repeated and layered by hand. I contrasted these reproducible images with more expressive painterly and trace monotypes. By combining these methods, I sought to investigate the application of overwhelming mechanical systems to unique, humanist images.

The digital images are sourced from my life, both past and present. A warning label from a Pepsi machine served as the seed phrase for the project. Google Street View provided images of the office building from my crop insurance temp job 20 years ago. The experience of growing up and living in agribusiness-dominated Iowa provided connections to land (de)valuation. Scanned halftone newspaper images from previous work, including protest photos, convenience stores and gun sales also added context to the series.

I printed around 36 images for this series. While many of the earliest printed layers explored abstract painterly monotypes and figurative trace drawings, the images become increasingly mechanical as the series and layers advanced. The most ‘successful’ images in the series were those created with mostly repeatable matrices - 3D printed and acrylic plates. Is this because they are more engaging, or am I inherently biased towards mechanically/digitally reproducible images? Did the production and schedule constraints drive this kind of work? Am I disgusted by the overarching drive towards quantification and value, or am I most at home in that system?

Image List