Christopher McDonald lives in Brooklyn, New York and began working on Gertrude in January of 2008. He has performed and shown his work in Leeds, Koeln, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Providence. In addition to producing artwork, he works as a music mastering engineer at Spleenless Mastering in Brooklyn and has worked on albums by Clint Michigan and Point Juncture Washington among others. He also has a number of musical projects that he produces and performs in, including PdL?, Cute Cute Awesome Awesome, ASDF;, Benni E. and Sgt. Sass. Sound and music are often key elements in his artwork as well.
In addition to Gertrude, Chris has created a number of other audio and visual microcontroller-based works including an interactive microcontroller-based generative color video installation (VPDEO Game, 2007), a self-modifying drum step sequencer with freshly melting candy on an overhead projector (Hell Yup!: DJ Candy, 2007) and sound-generating electronics where the sound begins to deteriorate after the circuit sets itself on fire (Tikichips, 2006).