The thing itself is not the subject: there's no requirement for the physical thing that's photographed to also be the subject of the photograph. A photo of a plastic cup could be about that plastic cup, but it could also be about consumption, disposability, the shape of the city, or any number of other things that have absolutely nothing to do with plastic-cup-ness at all.
The subject of the Mechanism series, among other things, is loss, desire, sound, communication, hope, anxiety, discord, anger, stasis, collapse, and redemption. It's about feeling unheard and out of place in the environment of our own creation; it's the effort and striving of connecting and communicating across the din of our surroundings. It's about how the essence of sound lies within noise, and that to listen to noise – to pay attention even when there's no locus of interest – will reveal pattern and value.
The fact that all of the Mechanism images were created with disposable plastic cups might mean something, but it doesn't need to. The thing itself is not the subject.
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