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Trimpin: The Sound of Invention
Trimpin: The Sound of Invention (2009)
USA
Director Peter Esmonde Producer Peter Esmonde Cinematographer Peter Esmonde Editor Rick Tejada-Flores Music Trimpin
With Trimpin, Charles Amirkhanian, Hank Dutt, Kyle Gann, David Harrington, Jacob MacMurray, Cork Marcheschi, Conlon Nancarrow, John Sherba, Jeffrey Ziegler
Runtime 79 min


‘Don’t be afraid to laugh’ – The final words of director Peter Esmonde’s introduction to his astute yet deeply intriguing documentary; a two year journey following a dramatically less lucid audio architect known simply as Trimpin. It is understandable that Esmonde had concerns that his film might expose Trimpin as a laughable quirk to simply be observed, however, what his film actually displays, triumphantly, is a sonic conversation with the artist. Rather than observe him, we are invited to gaze into the many facets of his creativity which he articulates through a primitive curiosity with sounds. Whether they are atmospheric noises, accidental crashes, or just pauses for silence, Trimpin is a man who has refracted the appreciation of sound, and discovered an unrefined eloquence with the audible.
 
Originally from a rural German village, close to where the first cuckoo clocks were made, Trimpin grew up with a fascination of life’s workings. Dismantling household gadgetry and fine-tuning his passion for sound artistry from a kitsch selection of short handbooks, he began what he calls ‘a lifetime investigation’. Although Trimpin was awarded the MacArthur Genius Grant in 1997, his search, or rather addiction, for new sounds, or new ways of creating sounds prior to this, had taken him through a long series of ‘fuck you letters’ from galleries worldwide, refusing to consider his exhibitions. It is an enlightening turn in the film’s dialogue to see a man who, at first seemingly wants to discover for himself, to then move and uncover an artist who wants his installations to be questioned and re-analyzed themselves.
 
Following Trimpin through a junkyard of towering cast iron and disfigured sheet metal sees him in drawing board mode. ‘My work is based on found objects’ he states whilst rummaging through trays and bins of scrap, eventually deciding on a handful of gear mechanisms and other seemingly benign and unwanted objects. Like a child diving through boxes of LEGO, Trimpin’s approach to producing his audio sculptures is to utilize the overlooked characteristics of the things we throw away and judge them on their sonic personality, rather than visual aesthetic. Left to his own devices – which is clearly the route Esmonde wished to take – he taps and flicks, drops and plucks, claps and listens, and with no response is given an answer.
 
In the same way that Fischli and Weiss reignited kinetic catastrophe into household objects in The Way Things Go; or how Theo Jansen sculpted the dynamics of the wind in his kinetic works; Trimpin is a reverberating reflection of what artistry can, and in many cases, should be, and his never-ending scurry through the unwanted to discover the unheard is his highest octave. Esmonde’s brief yet modest glimpse at this elusive man certainly doesn’t succeed with any technical high ground, nor does its structural approach prove to be the winning formula. It is the director’s discovery of his own that allows him to, like Trimpin, produce a rough-edged film; one that acts as a creative capsule to harbour chaos and clarity, but not define them.


Jamie Isbell