Here’s a photo I made of my Christmas tree out in front of my house…
O Tannenbaum
Dec 21
Christmas Cards
Dec 12
I’m writing Christmas cards tonight. It’s part of my refocused effort to enact more rituals in my life. I’ve instituted a new Christmas Card Writing ritual this year in this effort. I begin the evening writing Christmas cards to my near and dear. As the writing progresses, so does the consumption of holiday libations. So, if your Christmas card contains a confusing message, or perhaps one translated into Polish, please don’t be offended. That’s why I try to sign them all, “Love, Chris”. If you don’t get that part, then I’m working up to it still.
Love, cg
The Golden Rope
Nov 28
I’ve been at this art photography game long enough to experience many twists and turns. I’ve seen my vision clearly, and I’ve lost it completely. I have been at both ends of this journey in a single moment. I have hunted the decisive moment as I have imagined Henri Cartier-Bresson would have done, and I’ve hunted it the way I know that only Christopher Green can realize. I can see now that these polar permutations of my creative spirit have a common thread connecting them. Thread as a word or concept, though, is not enough. It is too tenuous. My vision is truly strong, twisted and turned like the many threads that compose a rope.
The rope of my vision is golden. It is invaluable at least to me. It connects the images of my wandering creative essence in a virtually linear evolutionary process. There are no missing links in a rope… not to the human eye. Links are the components of the chain that acts as a technological construct to imprison the creative spirit. Rope is an organic representation of infinite possibilities connected by a singular unified purpose. That is what my art is based on. Being human, I am incapable of defining a singular unified purpose, however, and realizing this unalterable fact I credit my vision to a power I am fortunate to channel. I am not Midas. I cannot make gold. I can only tap into its source, and draw it out as long as I know the truth of it.
My understanding of art is this… it does not belong to anyone. Not the creator, not the viewer. It belongs to this unknown power that speaks to us. It tells us what to do. We cannot hear it, but we can know its meaning by shutting our minds to ourselves. We impose our will upon it foolishly. We cannot argue with it, because it does not defend itself. It is a chimera. Believe this, there are no artists, there are only pioneers.
#4*
Nov 20
Wow! Just got back from the NY show at 109Square. What a great place! Awesome people there putting the show on with us. Thank you very very very much to Brian and Antoine whose hands on support was exceedingly excellent. Thank you very very very much to all the peeps that made it happen… Brian Rogers for booking us and the admin staff of Julio Montero, Chris Davis, and Connie Baker for greasing the skids. We’ve done a lot of shows at this point in our careers, and we’ve found that you tend to get people that are either enthusiastic or competent. You rarely find both qualities together, and this place is one of those exceptions. Everybody is spot on! 109Square is a new venue, and anyone in the area should check it out.
I’ll be posting some photos and some music from the show after I’ve had a little chat with my growler. It’s a satanic beer thing, you wouldn’t understand.
Phenomenon
Nov 17
We’re ready to play. Bring a hose.
Bionaut packs the mascots for New York.” title=”CGreen_20091117_7779″ width=”640″ height=”428″ class=”size-full wp-image-129″ />
Bionaut packs the mascots for New York.
Dinosaur Easel
Oct 16
I sometimes wish I had never heard of Bionaut. Pity, if I had never created it, I never would have had to hear of it. Nonetheless, in all things electronic music I blame Paul Eggleston, or at the very least Klaus, Del and Dikmik. Yet it was Paul who enabled my own descent into the maelstrom, so let it be him.
Painting with electronic sound is a most treasured experience, but preparing the canvas and palette can be much more strenuous than brushing on gesso and squeezing a few tubes. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so noisome, should there not be the requirement of moving the gear over hill and dale, and crossing bridges to reach houses your grandmother wouldn’t dare set foot near in order to present your art to the masses. Unfettered so would not be quarrelsome. Alas, it is not to be in this age. Armies march with sword, shield, and armor and Bionaut must load in and load out with the same.
Bionaut is an ‘old-school’ electronic act. We already own piles of electronic instruments built of steel and circuits. Born in an earlier age, we lumber as dinosaurs. The ground will shake and the tiny mammals shall quiver and hide. Bionaut shall convey its weighty presence to all corners of its empire until gravity shall pull it down. The descent of bones imagined as the hope of a fossil record bears the effort.
I know of no other band that even approaches our lack of logic. We are perhaps like Romans styling ourselves as Hellenic philosophers, refusing to learn the lesson that non-commercial effort leads to no success yet reveling in our glory as aesthetic champions. We hew to the belief that communion with the mysteries represents an ideal which attained bestows a sense of spiritual triumph and, thusly, justification of the work.
Metal Nods
Oct 13
I’ve been reading a book about Judas Priest called ‘Heavy Metal Painkillers’. I don’t know about you, but seeing Priest live is f$#%ing awesome. Inspiring is the word that jumps to mind. I’m an old geezer, of course, so I have the privilege of having seen the boys 4 or 5 times in the 70’s. Stories for another blog, perhaps.
In any case, reading about their approach to creating their music lit a fire under my ass, and I started writing music again. I’ve been off in the land of milk and honey, I suppose, thinking that I’ll just keep pulling tunes out of my netherregion, but thank Priest I’ve gone back to basics once again.
Probably what this is really about is a professional approach to making music. Bionaut has existed since the beginning as an entity which engenders ambient revolution. We’re totally against it, whatever it is… whatever. We’re sabotage rebels without a cause. Our potential for apathy is so all powerful that we don’t even care if we play ever again. Yet, our love for knob twisting, brain frying, full-on dick-out electronic music keeps leaking into ambition, and it cannot be denied.
Thus, we shall sally forth once again to purvey our latest batch of sonorous sonatas so soulfully that sleep shall serve as your only sensible solution to submit to our somnapheliac supplication. See you soon.
See Me Feel Me
Oct 13
I’ve been busy writing music for Bionaut’s next show in New York. I haven’t had time to blog. Here’s another pearl for your string…
It is important for me to physically interact with my art. For many years I did the day to day work of physical art, moving stacks of large rather heavy breakable framed photographs from one side of a room to the other and the like, and as I’ve become more computer literate I’ve found myself doing less and less of it.
Why, just now I was in the basement reorganizing space so that I could set up a proper Bionaut rig for rehearsal and recording. There I was moving yet another stack of art, shifting synthesizers around (some of which are referred to in the Bionaut lexicon as ‘dead grandmothers’), and getting distracted all over the place every two seconds as I picked up yet another memento of my creative process with which I was at one time involved with as I labored over or with it.
I must say that I had one of those embarrassing ‘a-ha’ moments where I re-realized something I should never have allowed to leave the forefront of my brain. Physical interaction with the art IS THE ART! Of course, the vision is the true art, but the mind is up you know what creek without the body over which to exercise control. Further, the body has a way of having its own say in the matter once it becomes involved in the process.
Art of the mind is philosophy. It’s wonderful to be successful at, and even more wonderful to be satisfied in the knowledge that only a few other committed souls shall comprehend it. For those of us who require a connection with a larger audience for the purpose of, say… making a living, it is much more important to filter your artistic philosophy through the body to make sure it has some basis in the world that the vast majority of people inhabit.
If you’ve read this far, then you obviously realize that I am pontificating on one of the most useless topics ever conceived by mankind… the justification of the creation of art. Nonetheless, I proceed with confidence knowing that I have looked into the abyss and seen the bottom. Best of luck. Brained out total amnesia.
Each Day, A Walk
Oct 8
I’ve been invited to exhibit my photography as part of a series of Cape Cod ‘Master Photographers’. I haven’t produced a show of photography in some time, so it’s been a bit of a process generating a relevant theme to the show. My last journey out to Sandy Neck did the business. I’ve got the goods.
As an artist, one has the challenge of actually producing art. Art is the product of vision. Therefore, one must merely have the vision in order to produce the art. The problem is, however, that vision is elusive. It isn’t for lack of seeing, but understanding. Too many times we see art all around us, but do we understand what our vision is telling us what to see? Too often, we do not.
Inspiration seemingly arrives with the wind. We wake up seeing AND understanding. We are ready to make art. We are ready to understand our art, and with determination capture our vision in the medium of our choosing.
I created the foundation of my art in the natural world. I generally use unnatural man-made technological devices to create my art, but there would be no art without nature. My connection with the natural world is made by walking in it. When I walk in nature…
FLAC Attack
Oct 7
Finally getting moving on converting audio to FLAC files that will serve as masters for everything you folks are going to get your moldy meat-hooks into. The hamsters are spinning their wheels at high speed.
