Hi Trimph,
This is a great question you asked and you received some valuable feedback already. Pay no attention to anyone that tells you NOT to do something on an instrument and experiment on your own bro. Bassists have been chording for years. Two examples of this (in brief) would be:
1. A single guitar player band: When you have one guitar player, as soon as he goes into a guitar solo, that rhythm drops out. It sure is helpful when you have a bassist that can keep things moving as well as trying to recover some of what the song has lost once that guitar breaks into a solo. You never quite recover it all, but it sure helps when you have a bassist that knows how to cover in a single guitar band.
2. Thicker instrumentation presence: In certain sections, the bass switching to chords can really thicken up and orchestrate a piece a bit more. Have you ever heard someone say "man, for 3 guys, they sure do make a lot of noise!"? This means all the dudes in the band are creating a full sound for just having 3 guys. And to do that, it really does help when a bassist has the mentality to be a team player and do what is needed in a section. Michael Anthony from Van Halen is an excellent example of a bassist that has this ability. He's no fantastic bassist, but he's brilliant for a 3-piece rhythm section and the right man for the job in any band he gets in. Now keep in mind, it helps when you have players like EVH or Satch playing lead to keep your focus off of "what just dropped out" when they go into a solo, but knowing you have a bassist that can make it a lot better really does help.
The one thing to be careful about is the mud that's been mentioned. Low strings forming chords create a distortion as well as a dissonance that is sometimes very unpleasant as well as unwanted. One of the key reasons for this is not being in perfect tune. A bass that is a few increments out...or one that is tuned "by ear" may sound more dissonant than the bass that is tuned with a tuner. That said, as soon as you high pass that stuff a bit, the bass comes to life and actually sounds presentable. My bassist in my original band has 3 sounds he uses which are just a matter of twisting knobs on his Factor bass.
He has his "play with the band sound" which is a normal, solid bass tone. He has his "pop/slap" tone and then he has the tone he uses when he "chords" on passages. The differences are in the amount of high end and low end. The normal bass sound is neutral...the pop slap has less highs so it doesn't sound like it's clipping....the chord sound has less lows and a little more highs. Picture it like compensating for the normal sound using chords. You wouldn't want as much low end in the chord sound because you want it to come through....and a little more highs so the chords can be understood and audible. This way when he switches back to the normal sound, it's not this drastic change-over. It's seemless and nothing over-powers. It takes a bit of learning how to tone shape in real time, but he's been playing 35 years so he's used to it. :)
Anyway, have fun with this...just beware of the distortion and possible dissonance. If you're not playing live, this should all be easy for you because you can just dial in two different tones on two different tracks. Just make sure that the change in tone is not drastic from one to the other because you want it to be so smooth that no one picks up you did this. :) Good luck brother.
-Danny