American Dream Machine

The American Dream Machine is an engine for visual rhetoric. This political apparatus continuously appropriates images from the public sphere, forcing the participant of the device to conform to idealized imagery presented to them. The American Dream Machine, or ADM for short, is a one stop convenient polling station for the American people. The machine can be placed in any public setting, providing an easy method for American citizens to reify their understanding of the American Dream.

When someone approaches the machine, the screen displays several images pertaining to the American Dream. The images are appropriated from political and corporate sources of visual propaganda that were originally used to reify idealized notions of the American Dream. An American flag perpetually waves in the background, muted by a patriotically blue mask. A portrait of a hispanic family fades into an image of a corporate CEO sitting behind a desk. The participant is asked by the machine to rate the images as they pertain to their own internalized ideal of the American Dream. Based on this poll, the machine calculates which image represents the individual’s dream. The participant can either accept the visual rhetoric that is being displayed or decline and offer their own interpretation of the Dream through the microphone that is provided. The participant must submit to the machine and accept the cliche, stereotypical visual rhetoric that is the American Dream.

The ADM was developed through the process of détournement, a method dating back to the Situationists of the 1960s where objects, images, memes are appropriated from the culture, rearranged to reveal ideas surrounding the original message, and then reinserted into the culture for further consideration. This practice can be traced back to Duchamp’s ready-mades and the playful nature of DaDa. Remix is essential to the development of our culture, as we are inundated daily by images and memes through political rhetoric and corporate advertising. By reconfiguring an ATM into an ADM, the public can not only use the machine in a familiar context but realize that monetary access relates to several ideals regarding success in America. The ADM allows the participant to deposit ideas into a collective database. As the amount of personalized ideals surrounding the Dream are collected, the quality of rhetoric displayed by the machine increases.

The American Dream Machine is displayed at the Lowe Gallery at Syracuse University for the remainder of April and into May 2010. Following this gallery presentation where the object is decontextualized and presented on a silver platter, the Machine will tour the country being dropped off in several locations so that citizens across the country can participate in the reification of the American Dream.

• Designed by: Steve Belovarich