Symptom Machine: This painting has associations with Modern ways of thinking about the logic of machines...Motors that spin, spools that wind, cogs that turn. Though the notion that machines can solve social problems purely through efficient function can at this point be seen as a romantic ideal it is still a pervasive cultural trope... Modern Psychology and Science in general tended to equate the mind and the body with the machine. The circular gesture at the center of the painting winds away while the phallic flopping limb to it's right hangs uselessly. The hand print brings attention to the flat surface of the painting as well as being an overt reminder of human scale and presence. I see a lot of humor in this work. A Symptom Machine might manufacture symptoms rather than a product. There is a Rube Goldberg-ness to it. I was also looking at images of Victorian factories, Scientific slides of Ameobas and Picassos blue pd paintings (in which "Blue" is a sign for melancholy an a wonderfully simplistic 1=1 level).