Daniel Blinkhorn is an Australian composer and sound and new-media artist currently residing in Sydney. He has worked in a variety of creative, academic, research, and teaching contexts. An ardent location field recordist, he has embarked on many recording expeditions; his sonic travels have taken him throughout Africa, Alaska, the Amazon, the West Indies, Northern Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and the high Arctic region of Svalbard.
 
Daniel's creative works have received various international and national composition citations. He is self-taught in electroacoustics and sound art, and has also formally studied composition and the creative arts at various Australian universities.
 
Here are Daniel Blinkhorn's notes for his third-place-winning composition:
 
"frostbYte—wild flower is the last in a cycle of works using field recordings from the high Arctic region of Svalbard.
 
While recording fragments of glacial ice floating in fjords, I discovered many and varied sonorous ecosystems emanating from underwater, each with its own distinctive personality. In every instance, the ice fragments reacted differently to temperature, pressure, and other observable phenomena, producing similar yet unique sonorities. From a physical perspective, over relatively short periods of time, both smaller and larger fragments became naturally sculpted by the elements into unusual and strangely evocative forms and shapes, each tempered and distorted by the elements in its own unique fashion. 
 
Throughout the work I try to capture some of the delicate complexity, as well as the unified symmetries produced through the charismatic, audible ecosystems indelibly linked to each of the naturally formed ice sculptures.
 
In order to transcribe, then sculpt, these natural carvings into gestures and phrases within the piece, I chose to deconstruct a number of hydrophone recordings into discrete elements, often organizing them into families of sound shapes.  I then reconstructed these typomorphologies into a variety of gestures, phrases, and forms, each of which contained its own attendant ecosystem of sound, much like the original field recordings.
 
From a broader perspective, the resulting phrases are intended to mimic the idea of something that is carved or sculpted by using an array of tools and techniques produced when physically carving ice sculptures. In my mind, the final geometries and patterns became like those of the short-lived wildflowers that grow in the region, each populating its own unique ecosystem and all subject to the natural forces at play around them."
 
More information about Daniel, as well as examples of his work, can be found at <www.danielblinkhorn.com>.