the timboucher experience

Table of Contents

1. Intro
2. Overview
3. Background & Inspiration
4. Synaesthesia & Consciousness Studies
5. Theatrical Elements
6. Social Organization
7. Why the Name?
8. Next Steps

Intro

Just in time for the Chinese New Year (which was yesterday!), on Sunday I posted an advertisement on Craigslist about forming some kind of avant-garde musical/performance group. It’s another one of those things which I’ve been wanting and waiting to do for years and finally just had the realization that if I didn’t take steps to enact my vision, then it simply wasn’t going to pan out.

So with an eye towards combining the future and the past with *right now*, I’d like to formally announce the formation of my latest collaborative effort, TIME TRAVEL CLUB.

Overview

This is the most concise explanation of what I’m after that I’ve come up with so far:

“Free-range musical, performance & mixed media collective in Baltimore, MD, USA.

FEATURING: Indigenous urban ritual music, home-made instruments, organic electronics, avant-garde improvisation, synaesthetic experiments, animal calls, bird songs, found sounds, outsider frequencies, pure magic.”

I guess maybe a simpler way of describing what I’m after is sort of a return to what it was like to be a little kid: running around with your friends in the streets, shouting and playing, the pure feeling of being alive, of joy, of unfettered celebration…

Background & Inspiration

My background, which you can explore through this website, is in writing and research about weird and “fringe” subjects: everything from the paranormal to conspiracies, media, technology, religion, alternative history & progressive social issues. I’ve been doing this kind of writing and connecting to people all over the world for six years. I basically want to transition the type of work I’ve been doing online into a group performance setting with others who share a similar vision.

I also went to art school (MICA) for a year-ish (1998-9), where I studied painting and then dropped out to do computer work and bum around the country “following my muse”, so to speak. As far as painting goes, I was always into really tremendously large paintings, murals, abstract impressionism, etc - things which were just physically, intellectually and emotionally overwhelming.

Recently, I’ve been getting into indigenous, shamanic, and ritual music from around the world - stuff that mostly was recorded by anthropologists in the field, documentations of spiritual ceremonies of healing, possession and celebration. Lots of voodoo drumming (polyrhythms), guttural chanting, animal cries, speaking in tongues, plant spirit songs - stuff like that. Been burning tons of sage and incense in my room… I’ve been experimenting with creating these kinds of sounds on my own in a more modern context - a sort of indigenous urban ritual music - but with the help of electronic elements, like CB radio signals, AM static, and all kinds of found sounds and ordinary objects pressed into musical usage.

If you’re interested, you can download a bundle of bittorrent files I’ve been collecting related to indigenous musical traditions the world over.

I’m also really interested in what people like Sun Ra were doing, not just musically, but socially, performance and character-wise and sort of the totally trippy “cosmic” element to the whole thing. If you have some time on your hands, I recommend watching the Sun Ra documentary, the first installment of which is here:

This keyboard solo by him also makes my head spin! Highly recommended.

Synaesthesia & Consciousness Studies

Synaesthesia is another concept I’ve been hugely into lately. It comes from gestalt psychology, and is a phenomenon “in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.” So if you hear a certain sound, you might also end up seeing the color blue - stuff like that. I’ve got some cool articles about this subject in relation to designing immersive technological experiences.

I want to, with music and performance, explore the nature of consciousness, of the senses, of awareness itself. I’m really interested in music as a universal language: of creating moments and experiences which anyone from any culture or walk of life could understand somehow at the core of their being; stuff which is so universal that even other species and forms of life would be into it! Like I said, pretty cosmic stuff… But I guess you could say my focus with the whole thing is to craft sounds and experiences which so fully engage audience and participants that they evoke dramatic catharsis, the central point of all indigenous rituals (as far as I can tell):

The term in drama refers to a sudden emotional climax that evokes overwhelming feelings of great sorrow, pity, laughter or any other extreme change in emotion, resulting in restoration, renewal and revitalization in members of the audience.

The sound, therefore, would be secondary to the vibe created and to the effects of the experience…

Theatrical Elements

Last summer I began working as a carpenter and set painter for stage performances - something I really love because it combines all the artistic and creative elements I’ve always been interested in. I’ve also lived with circus performers in California, and have done some juggling and street performing around town. I’m really excited about the possibilities available in turning this theatrical sort of approach to musical performance: of getting all kinds of different performers in many modalities and media to come together to create amazing situations and moments that the people involved will remember forever.

I’m also interested in experimenting with some of Brazilian dramatist Augusto Boal’s ideas about blending spectators and performers into a seamless, interactive whole. See also: fourth wall, Situationist.

Social Organization

I envision TIME TRAVEL CLUB to be a creative collaborative collective, for which Wikipedia has a great entry:

A collective is a group of people who share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together on a specific project(s) to achieve a common objective. Collectives are also characterised by attempts to share and exercise political and social power and to make decisions on a consensus-driven and egalitarian basis.

I’m really interested in concepts like mutual aid, mystical fraternal organizations, alternative currencies, and in creating social structures which will uplift not only members, but by example the community of which we are but a microcosm. With weirdly uncertain economic times around us and the potential for a Second Great Depression, I’ve been doing my damnedest to band together constructively with good friends, contacts and cohorts - because all we have, at the end of the day, is each other. Can we make Baltimore and the world a better place by getting together and making freaky-deaky music that will blow peoples minds and hearts open? I sure think so - or else I wouldn’t be doing this.

I have some ideas that would add an extra layer to the raw musical/performance elements as well. I’m thinking things like swap meets at every practice/performance (I don’t actually see any difference between practicing and performing - it’s always *now*, so always give yourself fully to it, no matter what), show & tell events with cool instruments or electronics you might have made, free-form open-source teaching clubs (See also: School of Everything) where people share skills and talents - stuff like that.

Why The Name?

TIME TRAVEL CLUB seems, to me, to be a perfect summation of all the stuff I’m interested in, because it cuts across all times, places and cultures (universal human experience) - plus time travel is freakin cool!

Next Steps

In the next few days, I’m going to be setting up a TIME TRAVEL CLUB website at www.timetravelclub.org where I will be posting announcements and whatever other items are relevant. I have also started a Google Group which we can use for indexing conversations around the subject. I’ll mail out invites to people who have responded to the initial advertisement, and members are welcome to invite other members. Also with the Google Groups application, you’ll be able to manage your settings of whether you want to receive notices via email, how often, or if you want to read them at the site(s).

Our first order of business, after tuning our intentions and mutual vision, is to find a time and place to meet up and play. But that conversation is probably better to have over email, so I’ll see you in cyberspace!

Cheers!

• Tim Boucher on Umbrella Radio, Wed. Feb. 11th, 8PM EST
• Time Travel Club & The Lost Art of Home Entertainment
• To Doug on GNAT
• Information Crystals Forming
• Sean Moriva’s Top Travel Tales