‘YOU WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN.’ A still image from “Windstar Enterprises Presents: Solutions.” (Submitted image)

Simon Adler, an Eau Claire native and now senior producer of Radiolab based in New York, has made one of the strangest things I have ever seen: a video brochure invitation for a self-help seminar called “Windstar Enterprises Presents: Solutions” which sent me down a rabbit hole to figure out what heck is going on here.

It all started when he found a box of “self-help hypnosis” cassette tapes and began digitizing and transcribing them. It was then, after creating a catalog of about 4,000 words and utterances, that he realized he could make this self-described “guru” say just about anything he wanted by taking syllables from here and there, mashing them up, and creating a digital instrument he could play just like any other. It’s a digital instrument that would allow him to take raw information he could then re-contextualize and reorganize manually to create totally different meaning, which would become one of the main themes for an album of work called Solutions.

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“I’ve always been interested in the world-changing tools that we build, and how those tools feedback on us, how they change us.”

SIMON ADLER

RADIO AND PODCAST PRODUCER

The album itself began as an experiment with sound, something that Simon is no stranger to. For his day job at the public radio program and podcast Radiolab, he routinely finds himself playing around with audio tape and cutting it into documentary-style sound collages that you hear on air. Utilizing this audio prowess, Simon created his own character, Dr. Richard Stillwell, to help change your perspective on the past with Windstar Enterprise’s “Solutions” program.

While the sonic element of the project contains melody, catchy grooves, and vocal talents from artists like locally-based musician Sean Carey, to present Solutions as only an album would be a disservice. Visually and emotionally akin to popular retro-futuristic movies and TV shows like Severance and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adler has created an entire world on a website to convince the audience Dr. Richard Stillwell actually exists, and that he can help you.

The cover of Solutions.

Given the modern landscape of the “omni-present availability of media,” Simon says, “I’ve always been interested in the world-changing tools that we build, and how those tools feedback on us, how they change us.”

“I think we’re only beginning to understand how this ‘meta-immediate’ reality we surround ourselves with is shaping our views, be it political, emotional, religious,” he added.

Along with the project existing online on their website, and in-brochure, Dr. Richard Stillwell himself is coming to Eau Claire for an exclusive live “Windstar Solutions” seminar at Banbury Place on Friday, March 14. Expect your life to never be the same again.

“Windstar Enterprises Presents: Solutions” • 7pm Friday, March 14 • Eau Claire Conference Room, Banbury Place, Eau Claire •  Tickets: $15 via volumeonetickets.org • windstarsolutions.com