Ethan Rose

Slant is a sonic architectural intervention that engages visitors as embodied listeners.  In this immersive installation, sound and structure merge to extend and displace the surfaces of the gallery. Hundreds of small speakers are attached to taut wires and strung in an angular fashion between the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room. The resulting triangular forms mimic the shapes and sounds of migrating birds as sounds are gathered, placed into motion, and dispersed across the space.

All of the sounds were constructed in the studio using  such varied sources as cuckoo clocks, feathers, and other instruments. The resulting recordings were then composed and recombined to shift between moments of density and quiet as they play out in cyclic patterns over the duration of the installation. Toying with sonic representations of nature, this piece engages the immediacy of sensory experience while simultaneously transporting the listener to sites out and away from the physical confines of the gallery.

 

This project was supported by a Career Opportunity Grants from both the Oregon Arts Commission and The Ford Family Foundation awarded to Ethan Rose.

 

Over the past ten years, Portland based sound artist and composer Ethan Rose has released recordings, scored films, constructed performances, created sound installations and worked with a variety of collaborators. In works that manifest across a range of media, Rose’s consideration of sound reaches out from the formal mechanics of studio composition to investigate embodied gestures of sound. His practice is often in direct dialogue with a specificity of materials, architectures, and technologies which are invited into the formative nature of his finished pieces. Rose’s works have exhibited, screened, and been performed internationally in a diverse selection of locales including Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Art Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Experimental Sound Studio, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Milan Design Week, and the SXSW Music Festival as well as many other venues, galleries, and spaces throughout the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Documentation Video