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Daniel Blinkhorn, media artist from Australia
His video “Resource 14” is participating in
VideoChannel’s “image vs music”—>
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Interview:10 questions
• Tell me something about your life and the educational background
I am an Australian digital media and composer currently residing in Sydney. My music
and audiovisual artworks have been performed/ screened/ exhibited at numerous
international festivals, events and loci. I have studied at a number of universities,
primarily focusing on music, as well as digital media and my degrees include a bmus
(hons), mmus, ma – research and a doctoral degree in composition. A more detailed list
of my background and activities, along with samples of my work can be found on my
website: www.bookofsand.com.au
• 2. When, how and why started you filming?
I initially trained as a composer and then decided to move into working intensively with
computers in my music. After a couple of years working in environments that completely
immersed the audience/ participant in sound spectra, I decided that I’d like to try my hand
at creating a visual component for the sounds. Firstly, to see what kinds of relationships I
could create between the sounds and the images, and secondly (and perhaps more
importantly) in the hope of creating a more immersive sensory environment. To this end,
working with film seemed a natural progression…
• 3. What kind of subjects have your films?
For me, the subjects are primarily abstract…frequency, light, texture,
spatialisation…these types of concepts really play the role of the subject in my work (or
at least the starting point) although I do also draw from subject matter inherent in the
sound component of the film, as with Resource 14, where the music is created entirely
from recordings of sand and so the images in the work reflect this by also concentrating
on sand. (When starting with images first then creating sound the process is simply
reversed…)
• 4. How do you develop your films, do you follow certain principles, styles etc?
You know, I’ve noticed that only one or two principles seem to dominate the
development of my works at present…The need to provide a kind of synchronicity
between the images and the audio is an absolute necessity (no matter how abstruse the
synchronous connections may be!) and gesture…It seems that at the moment I’ve been
creating visual environments that contain a great deal of inner movement, expressing a
series of interconnected gestures…
• 5. Tell me something about the technical equipment you use.
I primarily work in the digital domain with a variety of film production and editing
platforms on both mac and pc (Premiere, HyperEngine-AV etc) …I do have an old 16mm
film projector and camera which I occasionally dust off and play around with which is
great, but I mainly use a canon EOS 350D digital camera (with a couple of different
lenses) and a JVC GZ – MG-530AA Mini DV…
• 6. What are the chances of new media for the genre film/video in general and
you personally?
I’m not certain that I’m qualified to make any kind of penetrating observations about the
evolution of the genre film/video and the impact new media will have on them, but I do
firmly believe that, just as film and video were radical innovations in new media at one
time, they themselves strike me as highly adaptive forms of media which lend themselves
to a multitude of new media variegation and integration…For me personally, the idea of
diffusing material via the internet (in projects such as this) as well as drawing from other
applications of new media (podcasting, downloading, sideloading etc), and of course the
numerous innovations in advanced technologies for home studios, can only provide a
fuller, broader and richer platform for the creation of the genre film and video…
• 7. How do you finance your films?
Entirely on my own…Due to the nature of my work to date (works that don’t involve
extensive resources of cast and crew, post production etc), I’ve had the luxury of simply
doing all the video direction, production, editing and sound myself…This obviously
reduces costs exponentially, with only hardware and software being the real issues
monetarily however, this will probably change over time with the inclusion of more
resources/ equipment etc and so I expect finance for my work will become more of an
issue in the future…
• 8. Do you work individually as a video artist/film maker or do you work in a
team? if you have experience in both, what is the difference, what do you
prefer?
I work independently, which means I’m unable to comment on any of the collaborative
issues inherent in team projects. In the future I hope to work with others as I believe
(probably as a result of my music background) that joint projects and interdisciplinary
collaborations help to bring about new ways of seeing and thinking about concepts etc,
something which is vital to the medium of film and video…
• 9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your film/video making?
I would have to say the wonderfully creative and inspired Canadian film maker/ artist/
animator Norman Maclaren’s works have made a real impact on the way I see and think
about film making… The appeal of his works in particular for me would be the amount of
experimentation and innovation he generated through the use of new techniques in
animation, the brilliant, deeply colourful and sometimes humorous presentation of his
material, and the penetrating relationships he forms with music/ sound art and video…
• 10. What are your future plans or dreams as a film/video maker?
My future plans…? To continue investigating some of the more synchronous aspects of
sound and image, and the relationships created when we place the same amount of
emphasis on both elements… I have plans to move into works for multichannel video and
audio as well as learning (and hopefully developing) new techniques in digital filming
and editing which may or may not draw from elements of sonification resultant in the
images and gestures created on screen…