Trimpin

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IF VI WAS IX: Roots and Branches, the Trimpin sculpture installed in the Experience Music Project, Seattle, is one of Trimpin's few pieces incorporating electronic instruments, as against electronically controlled acoustic instruments

IF VI WAS IX: Roots and Branches,^[1] the Trimpin sculpture installed in the Experience Music Project, Seattle, is one of Trimpin's few pieces incorporating electronic instruments, as against electronically controlled acoustic instruments

Trimpin (b. 1951 in Istein, Germany) is a Seattle, Washington-based sculptor, musician, and composer, most of whose pieces integrate both sculpture and music in some way, and many of which make use of computers to play these instruments.

Growing up near the French and Swiss borders, Trimpin (who uses only his last name) was the son of a brass player, and as a child had access to old brass instruments to experiment with. He played brass instruments himself, but developed a skin allergy that made him give up playing. Trimpin's father treated him to spatial musical experiences, playing at some distance in the German woods, and young Trimpin also experimented with old radios. He studied at the University of Berlin.

In 1980 Trimpin moved to America because he needed access to old, used technological components, which were difficult to find in Europe; hearing that Seattle was a nice place, he settled there. One of his early installations was a six-story-high microtonal xylophone running through a spiral staircase in an Amsterdam theater, with computer-driven melodies ripping up and down it. Another piece was a water fountain installation in which drops of water, timed in complex rhythmic fugues, dripped into glass receptacles. Trimpin has invented a gamelan whose iron bells are suspended in air by electronic magnets; a photo sensor prevents them from rising past a certain point, and since they don't touch anything, once rung they will sound with a phenomenally long decay. He has invented an extra-long bass clarinet with extra keys spiraled around the instrument for a microtonal scale; this instrument requires a human to blow through the mouthpiece, while the dozens of extra keys are played via computer. In 1987 he met Conlon Nancarrow, composer of experimental player piano music unplayable by a human pianist, and invented a machine to convert Nancarrow's player piano rolls into MIDI information, thus saving their contents from potential deterioration and disaster.

Trimpin has invented machines to play every instrument of the orchestra via MIDI commands. His mechanical cello can achieve virtually unnoticeable bow changes, and his MIDI timpani can be rubbed quickly by the mallet, for a timpani drone unachievable by human hands.

Although his music is computer-driven, Trimpin almost never uses electronic sounds—not because he objects to them on principle, but because he thinks that loudspeaker design, basically unchanged for 100 years, has lagged behind the rest of electronic music technology. His one work to use electronic sounds was commission-mandated, a tornado-shaped column of electric guitars called Roots and Branches, installed in Seattle's Experience Music Project. Difficult to reach, the guitars tune themselves automatically, their tuning pegs turned via computer whenever pitch sensors register too flat or sharp. Beginning in July 2005, several Washington museums engaged in a year-long survey of his work curated by Beth Sellars, with installations and/or performances occurring at the Seattle Art Museum at SAAM,^[2] Henry Art Gallery of the University of Washington, Consolidated Works (which dissolved shortly after the Trimpin Exhibit^[3]), the Frye Art Museum, Jack Straw New Media Gallery, and Suyama Space in Seattle; the Museum of Glass and the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma; the Washington State University Museum of Art (Pullman); and, outside of Washington State, at the Missoula Museum of Art in Missoula, Montana and the Vancouver International Jazz Festival in Vancouver, Canada.^[4]

Trimpin was the recipient of a 1997 MacArthur "Genius" Award.^[1]

[edit] Notes

^ ^a ^b Announcement for An Evening with Trimpin (December 6, 2006), Experience Music Project, Seattle. Accessed online 28 November 2006.
^ Untitled piece in Vroom Journal (no date), also lists Suyama Space, the Henry, Con Works, Museum of Glass, Jack Straw, WSU Museum of Art, Vancouver International Jazz Festival, The Frye, Tacoma Art Museum, and Missoula Art Museum. Accessed online 28 November 2006.
^ Brendan Kiley, Almost Already Gone, The Stranger, Jul 6 - Jul 12, 2006. Accessed online 28 November 2006.
^ Jack Straw Productions' New Media Gallery page on Trimpin exhibit "Archival Investigations" lists all of these venues except Seattle Art Museum at SAAM. Accessed online 28 November 2006.