the timboucher experience

I’m just going to keep trying to say this in as precise as a way as I can currently muster and hope that somewhere down the road my attempts to articulate this vision will bring some worthwhile change into fruition…

My artistic explorations tend to bubble up from darkly unconscious springs, whose origins remain a quiet mystery. Following these invisible muses this afternoon lead me to embark upon an acoustic exploration of my own immediate perceptual environment. While I’ve been exploring the psychogeography of Baltimore with the Monument City project, I’ve also been reconfiguring my usepaths around the three floors which make up the row-house I live in. Been having people over to celebrate and collaborate. Have been very domestic lately: cooking chickens and soup and trying to feed it to people - though I haven’t had many takers.

The Aboriginals had their songlines - I wonder if they’re still used - I have my house. And I have songs I’ve written about my neighborhood, and which have been inspired my immediate experiential environment. Marrying the two together was as easy and it was informative. I started out with a simple rule: after each lyrical stanza (composed of four chords which repeat twice), I would move to a new location in my house. Through this method, I traversed five rooms and two staircases while singing the song twice, ending up back where I started: my bedroom.

What I discovered was something obvious, but which I rarely consider: that sound sounds different depending on its environment. My voice echoed more in the hallway at the top of the stairs than it did in the living room, or the basement with its many nooks and crannies. Each space I passed through also informed the physical movements of my body: having to bend, twist, rotate my torso and limbs, having to be careful not to smack the headstock of my guitar against walls and obstructions. I began to think more about the spaces I passed through than the lyrics to the song I’d written. Part of my intention all along, actually. Have the musical expression become second nature, have the music become the animating force which brings an environment to life.

Made me start thinking of those cymatoglyphs researchers are allegedly making with dolphins: where they are translating the radar-esque blips and bleeps of dolphin language into multidimensional spatial pictograms. We can use our voices that way if we want to, though we rarely do: as an aid for physical orientation and navigation. We could, if we wanted, bounce the sounds of our voices off hillsides or buildings, combine our whispered dreams with the hushed murmurings of creeks caressing the edge of a forests. We could sing our way through environments, speak our way forward and backwards in time and space. But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself…

Time for some pictures.