Trimpin
Like most days, today I was just buried in work. WAY too busy to take advantage of actually being in a college town. But, thankfully, I took a deep breath, put that all out of my mind, and went to the Jule Collins Museum of Art to watch the Screening of a fantastic new documentary film by Peter Esmonde eponymously called Trimpin: The Sound of Invention. The movie is about the work and creative process of the inventor/magician/mad scientist/composer/MacArthur Genius Fellow/ intermedia artist/ singularly named Trimpin. Born in the Black Forest of Germany, Trimpin grew up in the land of cuckoo clocks and various other types of mechanical musical menageries. His work is difficult to describe as it is “mostly in the air around you” to paraphrase Esmonde. The work is indeed spatial and environmental, and involves complex and beautiful constructions. But the objects themselves are not the actual work. Trimpin does not want you to see the machines necessarily – rather he desires only that you hear them with your “other ear.” Somehow I think this is even true for the project entitled “Shhhhhhh,” which Trimpin describes as being “Like a musical instrument, but silent.” This notion that instruments and musicians can circumscribe a spatial presence beyond the sound they make will forever leave me considering live performance in an entirely new light. Along this same train of thought, in his introductory remarks Esmonde even goes so far as to suggest “watching” the film with your eyes closed – now how many times have you ever heard a film maker suggest that?!
Production of Trimpin’s work consists of boisterous collaborations with other artists, home-cooked electronics, and kinetic sculptures(?) composed of found objects “high junk” the likes of which Trimpin comments cannot be obtained anywhere in the world outside of the United States. I am not sure I am all that thrilled about what that says about our throw-away consumer culture, but through Trimpin’s creative genius, it sure makes for some beautiful and inspiring work. All that said, for me the most fantastic thing about Trimpin’s curiosity is how divergent it is in its processes and methods. In juxtaposition, so much of design work these days focuses way to much on the convergence of ideas. In other words, maybe we spend an inordinate amount of time converging on a product or solution to a problem, when we should instead take a deep breath and be less focused on finding such immediate closure in our ideas. We should do more seeking and less solving. I somehow got the warm feeling throughout the film that Trimpin is not really focused on an end-goal, but is more interested in forging into the unknown through the simple act of persistent tinkering. I guess in the end it is this constant persistence with which I am ultimately so taken with his work.
So, be on the lookout for this film in your area – because it is not so easy to be otherwise exposed to Trimpin’s work. He has never been represented by a gallery and he does not own a cell phone or have a website. He does not document his work, and he has little interest in recorded sound or music. He evidently even abhors loudspeakers, and only deals with acoustic sound. In fact, outside of this movie, there are no commercial recordings of his work to be had. Fortunately the film is currently on the Southern Circuit of Independent Film Makers before it does the film festival scene and then goes into (hopefully) commercial release. Be sure to check out the trailer below, and go to the movie website for more information, videos, recordings, and still images of the work.
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