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Video Spotlight: Adam Reeder's 'Socio-technic Evolution'

Adam Reeder's Socio-Technic Evolution

Techno-muses

by Titus Gee

When his six-year-old daughter asked for an iPod, Sculptor Adam Reeder knew the world had changed.


Society and technology have become so intermeshed as to be indiscernible from one another, he discovered. The mythos of our era has a smart phone on its belt and an mp3 player clipped behind its tie.


Reeder’s cultural insight soon became progenitor to a series of half-breed bronze sculptures merging the gods and titans of Classical Greece with their 21st-century, digital counterparts — Pan playing his iPod, Zues sending thunder bolts with his iPhone, Atlas shouldering an enormous iPod Nano, a sleeping satyr transformed to a sleeping PlayStation gamer. He called it “Socio-technic Evolution” and used it as the final thesis for his master of fine arts degree at The Academy of Art University.


Reeder’s choice of iconic Apple products among his symbols of digital culture sparked some buzz among Mac-cult acolytes, which has led to wider attention and even some commissions. More importantly, Reeder says, it has demonstrated the very phenomenon that his sculptures discuss. At one time, his artwork might have floundered without an art critic to introduce it to the audience. But, thanks to the internet, “Socio-technic Evolution” circumvented the system and the audience introduced him to the experts.


Here Reeder discusses the project, its origin and symbols.

RedFence Interviews Adam Reeder on Socio-Technic Evolution from RedFence on Vimeo.



Credits
Interview by Benjamin Ross
Filmed and Directed by Titus Gee
Edited by James Roland
Post by James Roland and Benjamin Ross

Adam Reeder, 33, lives in San Ramon, California, with his wife and children. Bronze casts of his “Socio-technic Evolution” sculptures can be purchased through his website, adamreeder.com. He also can be hired for public commissions, monuments and private sculptures.

Posted on 09/02/2009 12:00 AM by RedFence

Discuss This

  1. I find it fascinating that as the artist he’s choosing to not “make the judgment call” about whether the implications of his art are positive or negative. He’s simply stating the fact that technology has indeed become so ingrained in Western society that it’s impossible to separate from the very substructure of our culture. This effectively just points out the facts, and allows his audience to decide how they personally feel about this new reality. I know personally, as a partial Luddite that the integration of technology into nearly every aspect of modern life is often frightening and frustrating. I mean seriously, what’s an iPod got that a Transformer doesn’t? Besides all of my wonderful music and videos, oh, and my internet, and games, and… oh… right, nuff said.

    Deborah Ross | Sep 3, 06:22 PM | #

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