>> Ana Pinto da Silva: Hello wonderful Microsoft community, art
lovers, technology lovers, technology creators. It is my very
great pleasure to introduce today's guest speaker, Trimpin. He
is a musician, an artist, an inventor, a delighter. Trimpin's
work has pushed the boundaries of art and technology, inspiring
audiences around the world. Trimpin's groundbreaking kinetic
sculptures integrate sound, music, and physical form across a
variety of media, including mixed installations, live music,
theater and dance performances. Amongst other things, he has
created a six-story high micro-tonal xylophone running through a
spiral staircase in an Amsterdam theater, a water fountain
installation in which drops of water timed in complex rhythmic
fugues drip into glass receptacles. A dance piece using
dancers' bodies to make music. He has invented a gamelan whose
iron bells are suspended in air by electronic magnets and he's
invented machines to play every instrument in the orchestra
using via MIDI commands. His installations and performances
have been seen at the Seattle Art Museum, the Henry Art Gallery,
sima space, the Museum of Glass, the Missoula Museum of Art,
San Jose Museum of Art and also in the Vancouver international
jazz festival in Vancouver Canada. His iconic work, a
tornado-shaped sculpture of guitars If 6 Was 9, robots and
branches serve as a centerpiece for Seattle's Experience Music
Project, the EMP. Trimpin is a recipient of numerous honors,
including the 1997 MacArthur genius award. He is the subject of
Peter Esmonde's documentary film, Trimpin, the Sound of
Invention, featuring music by the Kronos Quartet. In 2010, he
received an honorary doctor of musical arts from the California
Institute of Arts and since the fall of 2010, Trimpin has worked
with students faculty both at Stanford's center for computer
research in music and acoustics to create the multimedia
installation, the Gurs Zyklus in collaboration with composer
director and performer Rinde Eckert. Most recently he's been
commissioned by the Seattle symphony to create a symphonic work
using gesture, scheduled to premiere in May 2015 with Ludwig
Marlow conducting. Please join me in welcoming our very honored
guest Trimpin. [Applause]
Trimpin: Thank you, Ana. Pleasure to be here to do this
presentation and we can start right now like with this picture
here is actually my grandmother on the right, all my family.
And the picture was taken around 1921. And the lady in the
middle, she has some kind of a device in her hand. You would
probably call it today the iPod or whatever. It's very similar.
So when I was about in here my grandfather on the right, sitting
on his desk and in front of this tube radio which he was
building after World War I and when I was a boy, about nine
years old, I found this tube radio in our attic and of course I
didn't know what it was. I was interested, asking my parents
what is this and immediately my mother said never plug it in
into 220 volts. It's too dangerous. Of course it was gone. I
plugged it in and I couldn't believe what kind of sounds out of
this box came out like mostly kind of shortwave high pitched
sounds and with moving this copper coils you could modulate the
sounds. It was almost like playing like a musical instrument.
So this was kind of my first introduction to how to manipulate
sound. But at the same time, I was also starting to study brass
instruments, like the flugelhorn. And for some reason I was
always kind of disappointed that the sound of this flugelhorn or
this trumpet was kind of monophonic so you could only play one
note at the time, like a piano, you could play multiple notes
like this was kind of a restriction so I was starting to modify
certain kind of instruments, adding some other parts to it, like
a trombone with two horns like a stereophonic trombone or the
trumpet had a slide so you could go into micro tonal kind of
parks in music so this was kind of the early challenge to figure
out how to modify instruments so they would sound different from
the traditional instrument and you just need a blow torch, like
a plumber's torch, and you can make this. It's very simple to
heat up this brass tubing and just make different
configurations. And like this trumpet was possible to play like
the three valves like a regular trumpet but then with the slide,
you really could change like the whole harmonic spectrum of the
instruction or then like with this stereophonic trombone. But
about ten years practicing all these instruments, allergy on my
lips started to get irritated and then I was starting -- my
music teacher told me to switch to reed instruments so I was
switching to saxophone and clarinet. And then my tongue started
to get infected so eventually I had to quit completely
practicing. And I couldn't touch this instruments anymore. So
then I was starting to think about what happened to my lips?
Can I actually make a -- can I draw my lips? Because certainly
I was feeling with my lips and I was figuring out what my lips
actually was doing and similar to my hands, I was starting carve
hands. Hand would play the trumpet with the valves, the left
one would use the slide from the trombone so it was just kind of
learning how to sculpt your hands like it was more like how to
visualize what is going on, what did your hand actually do. And
so this was kind of the experimentation. I didn't have any for
training in sculpture and start to go make photographs out of my
mouthpieces I used because I couldn't touch them anymore or
starting to use my instruments I used before in a different way,
more as a sculptural element and this was kind of the way to not
comprehend but to deal with the situation of not being any more
practicing any more this instruments to try to still work with
instruments but in a different way. So it was just like
different ways to put a mouthpiece on a trumpet or a reed,
mouthpiece like the reed mouthpiece on a trumpet or a regular
mouthpiece on the saxophone. So it was just like different
constellations of instruments make a picture frame and making
photographs and it was kind of introduction to deal with the
situation more like separate myself and then I was starting -- I
couldn't starting music so I went more in a different field. It
was like [indiscernible] in German. It's like dealing more with
psychology and in this field I was focusing on theater and music
more as therapy like occupational therapy, how to work with
people in this field in music and theater. And at the same
time, I was also starting to build set design. And one set
design was for Beckett's, Samuel Beckett's endgame. And
actually, Beckett was directing -- he was a director. I was
live at this time and starting in Berlin and I worked with
Beckett for probably a couple years on different pieces. So
living in Berlin, was also like a part of it I was looking more
for instruments for other kind of sculptural pieces and I was
running on the flea market in some kind of a tin can, a round
tin can with a label on it and the label was almost like a
record label that was like an artist. It was almost like a
record insight but it was a spool of wire and I didn't know
exactly what -- how it was possible to put like music or speech
or whatever on a piece of wire researching a little bit more and
then I thought how can I listen to this wire. So what I did, I
had some toy clown, like this unicycle toy clown and at this
time I was experimenting with this Japanese reel to reel tape
recorders. So I put some amplifier on the back this have clown
and here it was like the pickup from the tape head and soon the
clown would go down, unicycle down the wire. You could listen
what it was recorded on this wire. So in the 1930s, before
there was recording on plastic tape like on cassette tape, you
would actually record on wire tape and there is a wire recorder
which was made in the 1930s and 40s but I was more -- I didn't
have this wire recorder so I made my own wire recorder so every
time the clowns would unicycle back and forth this wire, you
would actually listen what was recorded on this wire. So then I
thought it's possible to put memory in a piece of wire. Maybe
it would be possible to put memory on a piece of paper. So I
was starting this magnetic scores so I would draw some staff
lines and I was filing a very fine metal dust, mix it with
alcohol. I brushed it on this piece of paper and then I used
the same kind of technique, like a record player had and a
microphone with amplifier. And I would just talk or sing along
the staff lines and then audience would do in a gallery when
this was up would do the same. They would just follow with a
weaving head from the tape recorder with the headphones so they
could actually listen what was recorded on this piece of paper
so this was kind of the way how I learned how memory works
because memory is just like to memorize some speech or music or
whatever it is, some other information, it was a very simple
process to learn how memory works when you just can do it
yourself with some metal dust and a pickup system. So I was
starting to do different kind of drawings where all this
information mostly music and speech was recorded on this paper.
And at the same time I was also interested in memory how memory
worked going back to the Belgian inventor Jacquard who invented
the automatic loom where you could put some cardboard perforated
cardboard information in the loom and then it would weave out a
pattern. So I was starting to build like a player similar like
a player piano punch so where I could put information on a piece
of paper and then having a optical reading mechanism like
optical reader who would read this information. If the memory
was just on a piece of paper, but then playing it back, you
could use this kind of reader and then of course everything had
to be wire wrapped so this was before you did it on a printed
circuit board. It was all done by hand. Like each connection
that it's a back of a printed circuit or it wasn't a printed
circuit board. It was just like a circuit board but this was
all done by hand from pin to pin to wire this chips so this was
my first computer like music computer, the keyboard up there,
whatever you played would be memorized and here you could see
with LED which node what was playing, recognize which channel,
and this was way before MIDI existed. This was in the late 70s
and early 1980s and this was my disk drive because before you
had like this expensive or I couldn't afford an expensive drive
you would actually buy cassette tapes where certain programs was
available so you would put the cassette in the cassette player,
the computer would read this information, and that's how you got
the memory from the cassette tape in a your memory, into your
computer. So I was starting first with four tape machines and
none of the tapes, there was no audio on this tapes. It was
just like digital information stored on this tapes so first I
had like four of them and then I needed 8. And then 16. So
when you played something back, you had to put all the tapes in
the right position and then you would push the button, play, and
then it would retrieve the memory. So it was quite
time-consuming but it worked quite well. But one morning I came
back to my studio, the whole thing collapsed. It was too heavy.
It was on the floor and then it was time to buy a real disk
drive. So other interaction was using like a saxophone which
had sensitive key pads. So every time you would play the key on
the saxophone, it would be go into the memory base or open up a
percussionist with this heartbeat sensor so their own heartbeat
would determine should the rhythm or a different heartbeat. And
it was always hard to like I was never trained as a -- I had
basic training in electricity but not in computer science or
in -- it was all strange though I had to read some kind of
boring literature once in a while to learn how to use the
circuitry but when I was thinking of a circuitry, one time I
needed a random number generator so I thought, well, you can
probably buy a chip which has everything built in but I was
building my own random number generator using like this bobbing
chickens. You might remember. So they had like reflectors on
their heads. Every time they went down, there was like a
optical sensor down there so every time it would make a contact
or it gave the information, so it was like 24 of them and they
had some small flashlight light bulbs under their butt that then
would constantly move, always, they would always be in motion.
So when you have like 24 going on, it's like a 24 bit
configuration so you get over a million possibilities just using
this chickens but they would then drive a Selectric typewriter
with solenoids on top of the keyboard so it was more like a
percussion instrument first but about almost ten years ago,
there was a retrospective going on about my work and I worked
with a software designers so we actually used the same system
which was done probably in the early 80s but instead of just
playing randomly the typewriter and printing out garbage or
nothing interesting, we used -- this was like when Bush -- he is
actually up there -- was still President. We used the radio
addresses which Bush every Saturday and stored the unique works
and so every time a chicken would bob, it would select a word,
printing it out here on the Selectric typewriter and form a
sentence. So you could in realtime listen and see what they
would compose, what kind of sentence out of this radio address.
And some sentences was completely kind of chaotic, but some of
them made more sense than the real talk from this radio address.
So it was quite interesting to see how this works and you had to
insert 25 cents and then it was starting to type. So just like
a way how to visualize how a random number generator actually
looks like, what they are doing. And you can hear, you can
read, everything is kind of visualized how this would work. Or
also in the early 80s, I used pottery wheels like potters using
and made this record players and it was kind of a smart motor
electric motor which know exactly how fast, which direction,
when to stop, and so all of this 8 record players that could
start at the same time and stop or go backward, forwards. And I
used to use like instructural records. Like for example how to
learn the language of money. Or how to quit smoking without
willpower. And there was all these instructural records and
somehow they would just have this very strange conversation
going on because one would talk about how to quit smoking. The
next one how to basically screw somebody else to make a lot of
money and so it was cute a obscure and interesting conversation.
Or using some of the same records. There was once a singer.
His name was Wayne Newton. And I used 8 of the Wayne Newton
records and he was singing danke schoen. And it would start
like quite normal. They would all start together. But then it
would go out of phase. And then it would go backwards. So it
didn't sound any more like danke schoen. But interesting, when
you play danke schoen, backwards, it was sounding like bin Laden
for some reason. So this was kind of early kind of
installations because there was no way how to capture sound in
memory. Like to process sound. The sound could only be
processed in realtime using this kind of records or other kind
of sound-making devices and it was always interactive so when it
was set up somewhere, the audience could actually push a button
or play somehow with some other keyboards to get this going.
And then other instruments like from sound up checks like
kitchen staff was simple and it was all with electromechanical
devices operated and at this time, MIDI -- and MIDI stands for
musical instrument digital interface which was kind of in the
early 80s different companies came together and said we need
some kind of a unified communication system where all these
instruments can talk to each other without having ten or 20
different kind of protocols. So the MIDI protocol made it very
simple to have other instruments like percussion instruments
that had all this kind of mechanical, electromechanical solenoid
devices where they would be controlled via MIDI or making sound
like with bowed cymbals, like what was kind of belled and a
motor and then you could have like long sustained sound made
possible by percussive instruments like the cymbals, like more
kind of long sustained sound and it depends on the speed of the
bell, what kind of harmonics you would actually hear or start to
go think about how certain strings are kind of like a violin is
bowed or like the cello had like a bowing mechanism so I was
more interested to bow let's say very slow which you couldn't do
by hand because you would start to jerk a little bit but with a
certain kind of a transmission of the modal, you have the bow
very precisely going back and forth but on the other hand, on
the other side, it was other modal who would take care of the
tension of the bow to the string so you could be creating
complete different sounds coming out of a cello than you
actually could do by hand or like a portable tuba. This was for
a theater production. Also sometimes a coin-operated object.
This was like in England, there was like a serious spitting
image and there was like this head of Gorbachev, Reagan, back
there is Thatcher and old Bush and then Mr. T would conduct.
And when you inserted 25 cents, this was a TV, empty TV, they
would just -- a drum machine would just play a percussive sound
but they would beat each other in the same rhythm. [Laughter]
>> Trimpin: So and one time I was teaching for a few years,
working at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam and I had
to give a class for video artists, how to think about images and
sound and everything so I had to come up with a sculpture and I
had to look for over a hundred Dutch wooden shoes. And each
shoe had like a mallet mechanism built in and actually here
let's listen to it, the next one has a little sound example.
[Music]
>> Trimpin: Now, this was at the Frye Art Museum several years
ago, maybe eight years ago and it was coin-operated. You had to
insert 25 cents. And the reason with the coin has something to
do with first I had like certain interactive instrument or
installations with black and white keys so you could play the
installation with a keyboard and I noticed that especially
adults would come in and they see this keyboard but then they
would look around when nobody was there, they would touch the
key. Kids, kids immediately would start to play. But adults
was kind of afraid to touch the keys because they thought you
had to be a pianist to play. And so there was kind of a strange
part and then the next interactive part was that, okay, let's
just have a push button. And then I noticed people come in,
they push the button, push the button, but then they walk away.
Well, that's not good. Let's see what's happened when they
spend 25 cents. And then I noticed nobody was walking away
until it was done. [Laughter]
>> Trimpin: Because when you invest 25 cents, you want to see
something for your investment. So and in this case at the Frye
Art Museum, it was up for several months but there was like
14,000 quarts in the box. And it went to the food bank so there
was some meals, some happy meals appreciated later. So like
this was other installation using a piano adapter like this
wooden box had like 88 fingers, like solenoids. And on top was
some kind of a contraption. And this contraption was actually
bowing the strings, like it was rotating like a carousel and
lowering down and then bowing, plucking the strings, stamping
the strings or rotating. These bows would rotate very fast so
you could alter the whole sound of this piano just by preparing
the strings in an instant way. It was called IPP 71512. Like
IPP instant prepared piano. Going a little bit back to John
Cage, he prepared the piano, but by hand. So you have to take
it out and prepare it again but this would actually prepare the
machine without -- it would prepare instant. Other installation
was liquid percussion. This was like up on the ceiling that was
over a hundred water valves and underneath it was like this
glass vessels so you see like it's like a Dante Marioni that's a
Chihuly or there's a Chihuly. There's a lot of glass artists
donated this objects because they were all tuned like inside
some of these vessels it was like drum heads, stretched
membrane, like they are tuned kind of membranes like it was the
water would just hit this membranes so up here was just like
rain falling down and here this keyboard, when you touched a
key, then a water drip would fall down. And the water drip was
very precise. Every time you pushed the key, one drip would
fall down but it also was when you pushed the key very soft, a
tiny drip would fall down, but when you push very hard, like
with a higher velocity, you would have a bigger drip. So I was
more interested in this installation to visualize music and it's
similar like a player piano roll would fold down like you would
see actually the rhythmic pattern like one valve when you go
like bum bum bum bum bum, like one drip and then two drips and
then one drip again so over this spectrum you actually saw the
music, the rhythm fall down and then a few seconds later or a
second later you could actually hear it so it was just like
visualize how the graphical notation looks like and then in a
short while you could actually hear it and then the water would
recycle up and going as long you would play this. So other
similar installation I also used like with the valves like when
the valves are very close, like here there was quite far apart,
but other installation I had the water valves very close
together and then you could actually spell letters. You just
spell A or a V or a C. So you could actually spell letters.
And the installation is up at this Kawalami [phonetic] library,
one of this letter, falling water letter, speller, like it's
mainly aimed for children, for kids. They have like a dial.
When somebody's name is Abby, A, you dial A, then B, and then B
and then Y, or whatever. And then you push a button and then
you see your name falling down. So it's just like a way how to
learn to spell because you create your own fund in a way so it's
just using water drips. And so that's always like the interest
was always like to visualize how you make it very simple that
you actually see what's falling down. It wasn't just a rhythm
but interestingly like an A sounds different from a B when it
hits the water. So a blind person who would actually
distinguish between different letters how they impact when fall
down without even seeing it. This was once a mobile sound
installation and this was pre-kind of -- let's say not Bluetooth
but it was a viola, a MIDI violas system where all this
instruments was wirelessly controlled. This was actually a
bumper shoot one installation like this performance we are
musicians as well and this other kinetic instruments would be
perfectly synchronized when they were strumming in different
locations. So there was a conductor bike which was sending all
the MIDI information wirelessly and then the drums would be
perfectly synchronized together. Or sometimes working with aqua
falls, I had a few times the great like it was a great pleasure
to work with different, like from Seattle, like Wade Matson for
example. Other collaboration was with Elliott Feld in New York
on a piece and then I also got commissions from Mertz Cunningham
to compose a piece for his dance and of course each like each
piece has also like different instructions for dancers, how to
move, how to make the sound. And in this, let's go one more
back. Like all the costumes, there was full of acoustic
instruments like under the arm there was like a big pump so when
you go like this, you would actually play a flute or a reed
instrument. In the shoes there was like an air pump so each
movement, there was like eight pitches in each stanza. So each
movement would make a particular pitch so the right movement
would actually play a certain melodic structure so it was very
difficult for them to practice because one wrong move, a wrong
tone, so it wasn't simple to do this. This was actually the
score for Mertz Cunningham's piece. I'm working a lot with
graphical scores first to see in time and pitch range where
certain kind of parts are playing together or not together. So
that's always like a graphical notation. Very similar to player
piano roll to visualize how a musical score looks like. Other
installation was like working just with air. Like each of this
instrument that was like flutes, organ pipes. Down here there
was duck calls and in the other was reeds from accordions. And
here at the podium you had like other interactive part where
there was only two knobs and one knob would just play
chromatically like the different pitches. There was over
hundred -- I think 140 different flutes, different MIDI
controlled instruments. And on the music stand here, with this
dials, one dial would just set the mode, the musical mode and
the other one, the direction how it should move around in space.
And that's also like with this new movement you actually can
move the sound to this space in different directions so you
could follow and listen actually how the sound moves through the
space. This was a private commission for a doorbell, like
the -- it was my former landlord and he was building his
upstairs like he was remodeling. And he asked me how much would
it cost when I commission to you do a doorbell? I said, oh,
it's $1 a cubic inch. Then he said, okay, fine, let's do it.
And so he told the framers just leave a hole in the hallway,
leave a hole in there for the doorbell. So when I saw this hole
once when it was under construction, I thought, wow, quite a big
hole. And because it was 24-inch by 48-inch and 7-inch deep.
So I said, well, that's like 5180 cubic inches. So $5,000
dollars you know, not bad. So I asked him did you ever measure
the hole? And he said, oh, money no object. And of course
immediately he went and measured. And then he freaked. I
cannot afford a doorbell for $5,000. I said, well, it was a
deal, and deal, it was a done deal. So sorry. It's done. So I
had a few months free rent and some cash down, but when you were
ringing the doorbell, door button outside, like the accordion
would go up and down or the karate man would hit on the cymbals
or the xylophone would play or the bell would play or Teddy
would open his mouth and the eyes would lit up. You know, there
was a lot of things going on, like moving. Here's Teddy again.
Yeah. And karate man. So still, it's behind glass, but and the
deal was also in the first year that when people come in, it was
already done. So they didn't see how it works. So there was
also like a money machine, 25 cents, right next to it. And the
deal was that the first year the money went into my pocket. And
because I realized after the second, everybody knows it, they
don't put any more money in there. So that's kind of again like
with the 25 cents with a coin-operated machine. Other
investigation was also making sound with fire. Like the fire
organ. So there are some -- it's almost like a Bunson burner
built in but it's more like a very similar like a Bunson burner
but where you can regulate the temperature or the flame by
adding a little bit oxygen to the flame by just pulling down the
sleeve would heat up -- would get hair temperature inside and
cool, like warm air is rising, going through the glass tubes and
then the extension was just aluminum. So a longer tube had a
more deeper, lower pitch, and the shorter tubes had a higher
pitch. This was like two octaves and here was the keyboard.
And every time you pushed a key from a yellow flame, you would
see a blue flame. And the blue flame was much more hotter. And
then you could hear the sound which was like an organ but much
more richer because there was way more overtones in each
individual pitch so it was sounding as a very rich kind of sound
like almost like similar to our human voice. It was the same
octave range only possible like our human voice so it's very
limited. And so it's just like using thermodynamics to make
sound. And once I had like a blind person and a deaf person in
the audience and of course, the blind person could hear how it
sounds but couldn't feel or couldn't see anything how it works,
but through the warmth, like you actually -- the temperatures,
when you touch it, you could feel it. And also how this sound
was actually -- how body perceived the sound. So the deaf
person would actually watch the flames, the oscillation of the
flame and the deaf person immediately noticed when the
oscillation was a certain kind of a range, when it was twice as
fast, it was an octave higher. So you actually can see almost
when you really concentrate what kind of pitch range it makes
when you just look at the flame, how it works. This was a
installation in -- let's see, that's in St. Paul, Minnesota.
It's like this giant xylophone which was like in four parts.
And each part was assigned to a different continent. So it was
hooked up to the seismic network, to the world seismic network,
so the -- like when there's an earthquake, there's like a
P-wave, the primary wave and the secondary wave. And they
almost look like sound waves. Like of course they're much more
lower in frequency, but when you transpose them up, you can
actually translate it in a musical material. So every time a
earthquake happens and there's over 20 earthquakes every day
with a Richter scale higher than No. 6, so there's the whole day
some activity, the whole day playing. So let's say the
earthquake is in Asia, then this one was tuned in a pentatonic
scale so it's easy to hear like it sounds like a sound coming
from Asia. So you know the earthquake was in Asia or the other
one is not in this picture, like the African, when it's on the
African continent, there would be a more rhythmic patterns a
drum sounds coming, so each continent was represented somehow
culturally musically. And people who work there, they could
immediately tell, you know, where the earthquake was coming
from. And when it was over 6.5 Richter scale, then it was
playing very fast so you know there was a major earthquake but
then there was a monitor on the bottom where people could
actually get the real information where the earthquake, which
continent. And most of the earthquakes of course we don't read
about or hear about because they're under the ocean or in
Siberia or somewhere but here, this place, almost every
earthquake so it's quite active. And then of course the
notation, like when I compose a piece, I always do first like
almost like a blueprint like here there's a lot of kind of notes
kind of playing together and it gets more and more collection
but that's how I see it first like to make first like the visual
or translating the visual idea in a graphical notation and then
using this material to make them more writing more the score out
of it or sometimes using this Post-It and post it in different
kind of configuration and see how actually this was sound like
or look like so it's always like a different kind of way like
here for example it would start all together but then it would
depart again so this all helps to configure out later what I
want to actually do with this particular piece, what I'm
focusing on, what I'm looking into it, and this always helps
like sometimes two month later I don't remember what I did.
Just looking more closer into it than I remember through certain
parts and this always helps to get going. This was a piece for
it was actually on lake union, the piano had also like this
wooden box like this player piano box sitting and there was like
a hydrophone going into the water and the hydrophone would take
like the audio signal transferring from the audio into a MIDI,
like into a MIDI signal where the piano would start to play. So
it was for opening day, boat opening day. So when a diesel
engine boat would go by, it was more like a staccato, like the
diesel engine, duck duck duck duck duck duck on the water. So
the piano would play more kind of Staccato sounds and when a jet
ski would go by, it will play on these like back and forth so it
was more like the underwater sound pollution to awareness of
underwater sound pollution because when you are a fish down
there, you don't want to be down there when a boat goes nearby.
It's really noisy and loud so this kind of showed just like
translating this kind of information from under there, you know,
and in playing just above the water level so the boaters thought
it's neat or it's cool but they didn't realize that they
actually do when they driving by with their boats. This was a
installation called Conlon in Purple, the name of the composer,
Conlon Nancarrow which composed mostly for player pianos. He
would punch all his player -- his notation in a player piano
rolls because his music was made too complex to play with hands.
So in this installation, I had like six different levels. It
was also like this interactive part with this wheels and dials.
So for example, when you walked through the installation, there
was like you basically walked inside the instrument but
sometimes the sound would only be on the lower level and then
suddenly above you so below ear level or above so you really
could distinguish where the sound was coming from and playing.
It was just like walking into this and you really can follow the
sound being up there or being down there or ear level or going
in different directions. And that's always like the somehow the
calculations where the pictures will be when you hang like six
columns you know and how to make everything so I do everything
on my own. I don't have any assistants. So there's mostly like
first the Conlon then making a prototype and then I have
assistants when it's like a bigger project like a public artwork
then I have assistants because then there's a budget maybe but
otherwise there is no budget for assistants. But for this
project, I definitely had assistants and there was that EMP and
the piece is called If 6 Was 9. And it's right in the center
part at the EMP and I was a finalist. I don't know how many
artists was asked but there was like a big frank Gary acrylic
model of the whole EMP before it opened, it was still under
construction or before construction. And the finalists, they
had to come with a mockup which would fit exactly into the
acrylic model so they could actually see how the piece would fit
in there so I made the mockup was about one and a half feet tall
made out of this tiny guitars which is oh, about five hundred
cut out tiny guitars and I photocopies of guitars, reduced the
image, cut it out and glued it on the page so it looked like a
guitar and then it was you know put in the big acrylic model and
remember, there was a big meeting like with Paul Allen and I
don't know it was about ten people, probably most of them was
lawyers. I don't know. There was just like a big group of
people and nobody said anything except him. And I had like the
model and I had the sketches of the concept and it was talking
about that they are these guitars and they would like this
mechanical guitars, they would play whatever genre you can
imagine because they pluck themselves, they fret themselves, and
they just play themselves. And then Paul Allen was kind of
shuffling through all the paperwork from former works and I kind
of talk how the whole thing might work and so then he suddenly
said so, who is going up there and tuning the guitars? And of
course I wasn't prepared for this really because it was just a
presentation. And when there is no check in the mail, you don't
think too hard and so it was just like okay so I was kind of not
prepared for this. And said, oh, the guitars up there, they,
the guitars, oh, the guitars tune themselves. Then the first
time he look in my eyes and said, wow. And of course at the
same time I say, oh, what did I say? So but they are actually
tuning themselves. It's a very simple procedure up like each
guitar has just one string so you would need six guitars to play
or have one complete guitar and there's all this mechanical
fretters and it's now 14 years since it was up and they are
still plucking away every day. Unfortunately all the commercial
equipment broke down. Like the kiosk was running on Windows 98.
And they're all gone. Nothing works anymore, but I'm using -- I
developed my own circuitry, my own microprocessors. They are
still fine. And they are still running, but now it's actually,
the end of this year or beginning of next year, we start to do
some kind of a maintenance to replace some of the plucking
modals because when they pluck every day, they just wear out and
but everything after 14 years, it's still kind of up and
running. So I'm always surprised why would this hold as long as
and run as long? Some leftovers, I made my own kind of guitar
installation which also played all kind of different sound. So
here. [Music].
>> Trimpin: So I'm teaching sometimes at Stanford and at
Princeton and both have their own laptop orchestras so I
thought, well, I make just my own laptop percussion sextet and
there are actually all my old laptops which I use which broke
and they was then used for this laptop percussion sextet and
it's this time when I made this I also was start to go do a app,
develop a app so you could actually start with the app. And
this about 4 or 5 years ago and so when the app was done, I
worked with a former student of mine and I was ready to have it
on the I store? What is it called? I -- app store I guess. I
said, like, I'm paying every year my $99 fee so I'm done, I want
to have this on the app store because it's -- I can run
installations ad nauseam and it's free for the people that want
to use it. So I got an e-mail back from Apple saying sorry,
your app is not approved. It won't be on the app store because
it has zero functionality. So oh, that's strange. I wrote
back, said, look, there's a lot of functionality going on when I
push the button. I can activate all this installations, these
instruments. E-mail came back, sorry, we don't see any
functionality in this app so it won't be on the store. So I got
mad. Look, I paid my $99 since two years and so there's a lot
of functionality. So the first time I actually went to the app
store and looked what's on there, I was running immediately in
this apps which I thought had zero functionality, like one fart
app. What functionality does a fart app -- so I wrote back,
said, look, I can prove way more than this application which are
on this app store. So then they make me, okay, we want to see a
video of the functionality. And then I thought, okay, maybe I
use my Apple laptops and show when I push the button, they
actually play and at the same time at my studio, I was working
on the library project, I had this spelling, water spelling
prototype hanging in my studio so I said, like here on my iPod,
play. And then you saw A falling down. P falling down. P
falling down. L falling down. E falling down. You know. And
then I can also play my laptop percussion sextet and then the
next day, says your application is approved. So at this time,
they didn't realize that out of this iPod, you know, they only
thought the iPhone, it should come out of there. They didn't
realize that you actually would actuate or trigger other things.
Of course right now you can open turning on lights or your
garage door can open. But at this time they didn't think that
something else would have the functionality to do. So it's
always funny to tell them and then they're always so embarrassed
later. You know how things turned out. Although installation
at the airport which is right next to the people mover and this
two contraption inside which are triggered by reflex of the
light and it's kind of rotating very slowly and there are
certain modals which bring everything kind of in motion. It's
like this rain stick would go down or here actually this Elvis
on this kind of unicycle platform so when this goes, it's moving
up and down a little bit, so he just moves back and forth and a
ball inside would hit the cymbal. So everything kind of moves,
starts to move when people on the people mover walking by. Or
like the dog, the dog sniffing, dog is running up and down and
so everything is kind of this kinetic kind of contraption which
just moves very slowly back and forth and it's always like when
you are applying for this kind of grants, the jury sometimes,
they don't realize that they always ask do you have some
photographs? And no, it doesn't exist yet. Like it has to be
built. There's nothing out there. And I wouldn't put something
in there which would, you know, exist somewhere else. So it's
always hard to convince them because you are coming up with this
kind of drawings and even they cannot visualize anything like
from a drawing so it's always hard to convince a jury to coming
up with certain kind of just with some sketches or drawing
because you're competing. There's a lot of competition out
there. There's a lot of artists always applying for this kind
of public artwork. And so somehow you have to get the jury
interested. But it's sometimes hard just showing up with some
sketches and so although challenge was once doing a installation
for a science museum in Germany which was designed by Sahih
Hadith [phonetic]. And she was quite famous for designing
buildings which cannot be built. And but this was one which
it's called Fano. And when you apply as an artist, there's
always like a kind of a introduction of the when you apply for
this it should do this or this and this. It should fit in there
or whatever. For this project, they was asking, it has to be
connected to mathematic, to music, to all the sciences. So I
thought, okay, I just come up with three kind of rings and each
ring has a sphere built in. And they are in the ratio of 3 to 4
to 5. Like going back to [indiscernible]. They are also like
3 meters 4 meters and 5 meters in diameter. And I thought I
want to visualize different -- especially music but without even
hearing the music but you can see how a major chord like the CEG
looks like when it's rotating and also like when it's rotating
and there's like back here, it's like the three axis kind of
teeter totter and the cables go way up there and coming down.
And it's just like an XY configuration to bring the ring into -get the sphere into the motion, you have amplitude, you go very
down with the highest amplitude and then you get a frequency
like with these two values you could actually -- this sphere
into rotation. So when you play let's say the CEG chord, when
you would have a very bright light going, shining across on the
wall actually see the shadow with a sign wave. You see the
amplitude. You see the frequency how fast it's going. And when
it's absolutely quiet, you could actually hear the CEG humming
from this -- how it moves. So it was going different, not just
in music. It was different modes. You could also tell when you
go into the time mode. You could tell what time it is so the
biggest ring, this sphere would take 12 hours per revolution.
The middle 160 minutes per revolution and this 160 seconds. So
when you know where 12:00 o'clock is, you can tell 12:00 o'clock
is back there. So here it's 615 and 58 seconds. So you could
when you look up you could actually see what time it is but it's
a very boring mode because it takes like 12 hours for the
biggest sphere to go one revolution so it's not very active
except for the 60 seconds. But then you have also like the
astro mode which shows like the temple or the orbital relation
between Mars, earth, and Venus because they are almost in the
ratio, almost, not quite, but ratio 3 to 4 to 5. So when earth
is done, one revolution, Mars is still working on it because
Mars takes 600 whatever 80 days and then Venus is already done
twice. So when you look up, you actually see the temple
relation between the three planets. So just going different
modes and see what other mode -- there was like 2 or 3 other
modes. I don't remember. Hmm. Such a long time. But that's
just like modals are down there. Very precision modals with the
feedback system and they would know exactly how to start and how
to actually rework the face so you can go backwards. And I did
this just one, the prototype ring I did at the Suyama Space in
Seattle where it was just playing basically or moving, playing
in one objective range so this is slowest would be the
fundamental tone and was going twice as fast. It was an octave
higher. But it was more visualized -- it was more to visualize
it and also like again when you see the shadow you could
actually see the design wave and the amplitude and frequency.
Other installation was once using I think 24 carousel slide
recorders. What do you call the slide ->>:
Projectors.
>> Trimpin: Slide projectors, right. And I used them as a
rhythmic, as a musical instrument and I collected from Salvation
Army and goodwill all this family slides. Sometimes you find a
whole bag fall of a trip to Italy or a trip to England,
whatever. And interestingly, they are all almost identical.
You see everybody in front of the coliseum or front of the
Eiffel Tower or so all this family photos it was almost
identical except for different faces and they would play very,
very fast like you would see the slide only less than a second
because it was ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch. It's the
whole sound of the slide projectors was actually the percussive
instrument and then there was like this video or this CRT tubes.
There was just like from a TV manufacturer and I used a very
small kind of a valve in the back who would push the air through
this small shaft and it was just like a [indiscernible]. Like a
very interesting sound but it was again spatially going on all
over. So it was kind of the inversion like the slide projector
made the sound which supposed to do the image but then the CRT
screen made sound and not the image. Or Shanghai was
installation where there was like 36 bamboo tubes and inside the
bamboo was a reed and all vessels that was filled with water so
when slowly the bamboo goes into the water, air gets pushed up
and the reed gets into vibration and it would make a sound so
you would see any time the bamboo moves into the water or out of
the water, it made a sound. And the score was back there.
There was about 2000 CDs and the CD was just used as a player
piano roll but optical centers would just look for a reflex of
the CD and whenever they saw a CD which was assigned like each
line was assigned to one of the pitches, and then when it would
see a CD back there, it would move the bamboo because there was
all this modals up there on the top which would move slowly the
bamboo back and forth. Instead of wall scanner, I did one's a
8-foot CD so slowly this arm would rotate and just read with
this optical reflector, optical sensors would read the score.
So that's also how to interact with or how to visualize how
actually a CD works but this CD was eight-foot in diameter. Or
the Jack box which is a commission from a private collector and
then sometimes first I'm doing first the graphical kind of
outlines or project working with the Kronos Quartet. We are
actually at the Jack box, it was used as a park and the
collaboration of the Kronos was to work together as a
collaboration. And they also had to play some toy instruments
and toy violins and they first said oh, no problem we can do it
but then they realized it's not so simple to play a toy violin
and they really kind of got into it and they played actually
very nicely on this toy violins. A piece I was commissioned
from creative capital in New York which was performed in -- this
was actually here in Seattle at on the boards but it was
starting at Stanford. It was a piece about the village I come
from from Germany, all the Jews from this village and from the
whole region was sent to an internment camp in France in the
Pyrenees which was used first for the political refugees coming
from Spain, fighting against the Franco regime in 1939 and when
the camp was then empty in 1940, the French regime off of the
Nazi, a empty camp, so they can put the Jews in this empty camp
but they of course they got per head five francs so this one
Nazi Gauleiter offered Hitler a deal, saying, look, I can make
this reach [indiscernible] like free of Jews in no time, and
everybody was then taken by train to this camp in the Pyrenees
and two years later there was all shipped from this camp in the
Pyrenees via Paris to Auschwitz so nobody survived and this
piece was about growing up in this village or in this town and
trying to comprehend what actually happened. And I could only
do this going there to this camp, former camp which is
completely gone, there's nothing else anymore. And but it was
necessary for me to work on this since my adult life just to
comprehend and at the same time finding certain ways like
finding trees because I knew the trees was there 40 years ago,
recognizes 70 years ago and using like the bark of the trees
transcribing which almost looked like a player piano roll and
give me a certain kind of a timing structure and a pitch
configuration and then transcribing it to a score and this was
actually the score for the Soprano voice. So just using
material, I knew nobody was of course all the witnesses was
gone, but this was kind of a witness for me because I knew this
was kind of -- this tree was there before and just this kind of
material was necessary to use to really comprehend. All public
artworks is in Ohio, the sound arch when you walk underneath is
like a 24 pitched xylophone and it starts to play and a former
student of mine, Albert, he was playing with the installation
and the accordion. This was like the composer I talked before
Conlon Nancarrow, he was American and he was fighting actually
in Spain. He was also interned nearby the girls camp not for
very long because all the American fighters in like the Lincoln
Brigade in Spain they could get paperwork from the embassy in
Paris and they could leave the camp but Nancarrow was also
interned and he started -- and then when he returned in 1940,
the American government refused to give him a passport so there
was like Hemingway, Langston McHughes, different intellectuals
went to Spain and they all emigrated somewhere else and
Nancarrow ended up in Mexico City and he was starting to punch
all his complex music into the player piano rolls and in 1950 he
was start to go build this huge percussion machine and these are
all kind of ceramic parts where he stretched over some of them
brass drums like metal drums and wood blocks and he tried to run
everything from the player piano mechanism and when he was done
building all the drums and running like the pneumatic AR lines
to all the different mechanism, he realized that it didn't work
because it's too long for the air to travel to make it going
very fast. So basically he abandoned in 1950 the whole kind of
percussion set and dumped it behind his studio and in the early
19 -- when was it? In the late 1980s, I went to Mexico. I was
building this machine who can read the player piano rolls so I
scanned all his work and so it could be stored in a MIDI
database and then it was also possible that this work can be
played on any kind of MIDI compatible instrument. So at first I
was designing a scanner similar I showed before using light,
light beams. Every time the light was going through the
perforation, the photo sensor would detect like this whole like
musical information. But then I went to Mexico and scanned
first roll and we was listening after the scanning and he said,
something doesn't sound right. And I had testing rolls and
everything and testing and everything was run on a -- just on
a -- not on a laptop. On a Mac plus, whatever, at this time.
And I realized that sometimes when he was punching a wrong hole,
he would use scotch tape to tape it over so the air wouldn't go
through anymore but my light beam was going through the scotch
tape so he was editing a lot with scotch tape so I had to go
back and build a other machine, a other scanner which actually
worked like a tracker bar from the player piano worked with air
so every time a hole was going over the tracker bar suction was
created in this chamber and there was a small kind of a air
sensor and every time the air sensor got the signal, it would
register this particular node and it was very precise. So but I
had to hook it up to a vacuum cleaner because I need suction so
I went to Mexico with my computer with this scanner and this
vacuum cleaner but it worked perfect. So then care row was born
in 1912, so 2012 the Berkeley art museum did some kind of a
centennial celebration so I went back to Mexico and whatever
instrument survived like all the ceramic instruments, they
survived and some of the wood blocks survived because the
termites didn't like plywood. They would eat all the other
natural wood but not the plywood. It was some kind of a
mahogany plywood. So all this wood, wood drums, except I had to
rebuild all the frameworks because the framework was done with
normal pine wood but then I also didn't use pneumatic. I used
all mechanical electromechanical activators. And he also
composed a piece for prepared piano that the strings was
actually plucked like this is rotation material. And it's
called care row percussion orchestra, which are all original
drums from the 1950s except for the beat mechanism and it's now
installed. I have a studio up in Tylerton near Yakima and when
you get in there, you can actually listen to different
conversations which was I found when I scanned all his
information -- maybe we should stop. It's already three, right?
>> Ana Pinto da Silva:
Well, be --
>> Trimpin: I could go on.
questions. Right?
>> Ana Pinto da Silva:
Because you might have some
It's up to you.
>> Trimpin: Because there's not much. Let's see. There's like
some other piano stuff and like this piano was suspended hanging
to get a complete different kind of acoustical kind of -- when
it would sit with the three legs on the floor, it's kind of
damping, but when it's suspended, it has a complete different
resonance or building a house out of pianos. This was in a park
in New York. And it was outside so everybody week it sounds
different because of the rain. So this was just like this
hammer mechanism. It was bowing the strings and hammering so it
could actually play any kinds of musical song because this would
be the C. The C# would be here and then the D on the other side
so it would just go around and play the strings. But I don't
know how it sound right now because I'm sure it's completely out
of tune. This was an installation at the Seattle sculpture
park. There was three listening station. One was like silence,
sound, and music. And the music had like a toy piano. And it
was piped through the piping and the sound would come out here
and the middle one, the sound had like a rain stick sound, like
the ocean sound. And the other one, silence question mark. You
would listen to the trains and the traffic and so it was just
like listening station where you had to take out your ear phones
and perceive different. So let's stop here. So maybe you have
a few minutes for some questions.
>> Ana Pinto da Silva:
Sure, sure.
>> Ana Pinto da Silva:
Questions?
>>: Thank you, first of all.
had? [Laughter]
>> Trimpin:
Just to speak?
Questions?
[Applause]
How many arms do you wish you
[Laughter]
>> Trimpin: You know, it's not so much. It's more the time.
Like it's always you need time to do it. Like for example like
the water dripping, you know, like I just use a normal kind of a
dispensing valve you know from a juice, you know, dispenser, but
then they're clicking very loud. You have to make the changes,
but then the nozzle was a difficult part. When you have one
drip, you know, a perfect drip falling down, this took months
probably to get the right nozzle because when you push one the
button and a drip is falling down, you want to make sure the
next one is there when one would be missing, it wouldn't be good
enough. But then sometimes it takes time. I remember one night
I got really frustrated because it didn't drip the modal drip
was nice so I went to the freezer, got the vodka out of the
freezer, poured maybe a stiff drink and I realized wow, the
viscosity is different. So I immediately went, put vodka in
there, and it was a beautiful drip. So but I knew I couldn't,
you know, have the whole system running with vodka. [Laughter]
>> Trimpin: And it had to be frozen. But like sometimes when
you start thinking, so it's more like the time, not so much the
arms. Like it's always the time which is the biggest issue.
>> Ana Pinto da Silva:
More questions?
>>: Do you compose music separately from the machinery that you
make?
>> Trimpin: Actually right now I'm composing a piece for the
Seattle symphony and I tried to get rid of the musician but
legally I have to have a few musicians. [Laughter]
>> Trimpin: And but that's okay. I'm using probably only a
very you small chamber orchestra, but the conductor, it's an
installation will be in the Benaroya foyer like in their grand
lobby and there will be other instruments which I'm building
right now suspended and I'm working on this like the hanging
piano, the red piano had actually a music stand in front and the
music stand had a stereo scopic camera built in so you could
only start the piano when you go beat and down beat. So it's
basically like gesture control and for the symphony project, I'm
working with the conductor, Ludwig Marlow actually conducts the
musicians which are on the balcony in different places. And he
also conducts the kinetic instruments. So right now I'm working
with a former student of mine. He works now for Intel and they
are working on this kind of gesture control system and we -he's actually coming next weekend to work on more prototypes and
we tried different kind of cameras but the Kinect so far worked
best because with the Kinect you could be far away. Light
configuration is not too sensitive. So it looks like Kinect is
probably the camera or the interactive part we are using and
Dmitry, student, he has like the developer, the Kinect developer
unit so he will be next weekend back up in Seattle where we try
to figure out that it's possible to do dynamic changes do of
course different sequences. You can stop the sequence, go to
the next one and everything is done with gesture control. And
of course the conductor of the symphony, Ludwig, he is already
nervous of course because he doesn't want to look like a fool,
when he's doing something, nothing works. So he will also come
so we have to learn from him what kind of gestures are necessary
to learn how he stops, how he moves on, how he starts whatever.
So that's kind of the project right now working with the
symphony and at the same time, also working with the young
composers they sign up every year with the sound bridge of the
symphony. So the young composers have also the possibility to
compose for the installation a piece. It will be up for several
months at the Benaroya Hall like in the foyer and then the young
composer, they are like 16, 18 years old and they have then the
chance to compose for this. But back to the question, like I'm
mainly composing for the kinetic installation and each
installation of course has a score and everything is kind of
written but they are not really composed for musicians but this
one has to be and of course dealing with the union like they can
refuse to play anything which looks more like -- how should I
say it? Experimental. So they want to have everything
perfectly notated which makes it a little bit different when you
work with kind of this kind of installations but I have to deal
with the situation and I was told it was a grant from New Music
U.S. A. They gave five orchestras in the United States a grant
that orchestra could choose a composer to work with to do a
special project. So the performance will be May 1st and like
two years ago, they told me already when the rehearsals are. So
everything is kind of perfectly planned and so I might be
confused like this says 2:00 o'clock and it's 3:00 o'clock,
right?
>> Ana Pinto da Silva:
>> Trimpin:
It's 3:00 o'clock.
3:00 o'clock.
>> Ana Pinto da Silva:
Okay.
Maybe one more question.
>>: Where do you get your inspiration from and how do you pass
on your inspiration to your students or apprentice if you don't
have an assistant, how does this knowledge or innovation pass
on?
>> Trimpin: I have some teaching residencies and still ongoing
since years at Cal Arts and every semester, I'm going there at
the beginning of the semester, there's a certain student group,
mostly 5-8, between 5, maybe ten. They want to learn this.
They want to -- they are really interested in this field. And
so at the beginning, I will give them like one time the easiest
part would be working with percussion instruments of course
because it's just like some kind of very simple motion to figure
out. So every year it's a little bit more advanced so with this
group of students, it's very interesting to work with because
they're really in to it. So we have quite a lot of
communication going on and at the end of the semester they call
it the expo where they have actually a public performance where
they don't want to embarrass themselves so they really get
something going and done and so that's kind of the focus. I
don't want to waste my time would students who just, with a
should we do today? You know, that's kind of -- it's more like
focusing on this student. So I have two Ph.D. students, one
from New Zealand. They would actually come to my studio living
there or staying there for maybe a couple weeks and because in
my studio everything is there like you don't have to order
whatever and wait for a while. It's like a laboratory where you
can work. That's how I feel and wish to have this kind of
apprentice going on, this principle of teaching. So that's kind
of -- it's a lot of like hands on. You have to learn how to
work with a milling machine or with a drill because everything
has to be made. They actually -- my students have to learn to
use -- learn first like solid works so they can model their
instrument in solid works and then they start to think about how
it looks from the top, how we actually create this. Of course
now you have the 3D printers and everything so but they have to
learn the basics first, how to put a model a certain kind of
idea so you can actually print it out with a 3D printer so
that's kind of what I still miss, especially in this country,
there is no almost zero anymore like hands on approach how to
learn the basics to build anything because you have to learn it
from the beginning to really understand or from the basics to
understand from step to step. And so the facilities are gone,
like schools got rid of the shop, the auto shop, whatever. And
there was always the first experiment for students like to have
something, building something, make something different and
unfortunately that's less and less kind of happen. And all the
industries is not willing to spend any money for this kinds of
apprenticeship programs like it's in Europe like I had to go
through a four-year program where the first three months was
like learning kind of learning working with wood but then you
have to identify leaves. You have to identify the wood itself,
which way it was grown because you look first where the grain
going then you cut it or shave it. Just like very basic things
are not taught anymore and especially like in this field I'm
doing when I work with students, they also have to work first
making like a model out of cardboard or whatever and then they
see how difficult it actually is just to make a very small model
so that's kind of a sad part in a way that all this kind of
skills are not taught anymore to really have something hands on
and make something very simple.
>> Ana Pinto da Silva:
>> Trimpin:
Thank you so much.
Thanks for coming.
[Applause]