Special program "Embodiments of Art"  

Trimpin: The Sound of Invention is an amusing journey through the sonic world of an eccentric creative genius. Artist, inventor, engineer, and composer Trimpin shuns the hype and hyperbole of the commercial art world – he has never been represented by a gallery, a dealer, or a manager, and doesn’t have a cell phone or a website, yet his freewheeling sculptures and outrageous musical experiments are cherished by museums all over the planet. He prefers instead to spend his time creating wild musical devices in a studio that is equal parts Santa's workshop and Frankenstein's lab. Filmed over two years, this documentary feature follows the artist/inventor as he designs a 60-foot tower of more than 500 automatic electric guitars; builds an ensemble of huge marimbas that converts real-time earthquake data into music; and collaborates with the Kronos Quartet on an outrageous world premiere featuring toy instruments. The film will delight anyone interested in the mysteries, pitfalls, and sheer joy of creative experiment.

Festivals

SXSW Music & Film Festival, USA (2009)
London Film Festival, UK (2009)
San Paolo International Film Festival, Brasil (2009)
AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival, USA (2009)

Peter Esmonde

Trained as a filmmaker at Yale University and the American Film Institute Conservatory, filmmaker Peter Esmonde spent more than a decade working in New York City and Los Angeles in various rolls in the film industry: associate producer, writer, researcher, story analyst, assistant editor, sound editor, etc.

After toiling as a producer at the Discovery Channel in the mid-1990s, Esmonde was targeted by executive headhunters, and spent some years foraging in the corporate jungles of North America. He finally emerged in 2005 as a producer and director of documentary films.

Esmonde has also taught film, media, and information design at various universities in the United States. Although he has worked on dozens of other films, Trimpin: The Sound of Invention is his first documentary feature.