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ALLEN SUNSHINE

2024
Original Score

Director
Harley Chamandy
‍

2024
‍Original Score

Director
Harley Chamandy

A grieving former music executive retreats to a lakeside home, where an unexpected friendship with two young boys offers a fragile path toward renewal.

‍Allen Sunshine was awarded the Werner Herzog Film Award at the Munich Film Festival.

SHOWING UP

2022
‍Original Score

Director
Kelly Reichardt

IMDB

2022
‍Original Score

Director
Kelly Reichardt

IMDB

A dedicated sculptor prepares for an upcoming exhibition while navigating the daily complexities of her community, friendships, and creative life.

Showing Up premiered in competition for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and received the Robert Altman Award at the Independent Spirit Awards.

MAGIC MOUNTAINS

2020
Original Score

Director
Urszula Antoniak
‍

IMDB

2020
‍Original Score

Director
Urszula Antoniak

IMDB

An experienced climber embarks on a trek through the Polish mountains with her ex-boyfriend, only to discover that he has devised the perfect crime—with her as his intended victim.

VARIATION

Underside view of Variation, art installation by Ethan Rose

2018
‍Public Art Installation

Location
‍University of Oregon
‍
Materials
Electronics, Speakers, Copper Wire

2018
Permanent Installation

Location
‍University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
‍
Materials
Electronics, Speakers, Copper Wire

Variation is a site-specific sound installation located in the lobby of Berwick Hall. The work transforms the lobby into a living acoustic environment by reinterpreting the sounds from the adjacent rehearsal space in real time.

Microphones mounted in the rehearsal room ceiling capture ongoing activity and send the audio to custom software, which reshapes it—shifting pitch, stretching time, and collaging fragments—before broadcasting it back through a sculptural speaker system in the lobby. The result is a shimmering echo of the rehearsal space, familiar yet transformed.

Through this interplay of space, sound, and memory, Variation explores ideas of representation, transformation, and continuity—revealing how architecture itself can become an instrument of musical expression.

SLANT

2016
Exhibition Installation

Location
Regards Gallery, Chicago, IL
‍
Materials
Speakers, Wire, Electronics

2016
‍Exhibition Installation

Location
Regards Gallery, Chicago, IL
‍
Materials
Speakers, Wire, Electronics

In this immersive installation, sound and structure merge to extend and reshape the surfaces of the gallery. Hundreds of small speakers are attached to taut wires, strung in angular patterns between the walls, floor, and ceiling. These triangular forms evoke the motion and sound of migrating birds as tones move, gather, and disperse throughout the space.
‍
Slant was supported by Career Opportunity Grants from both the Oregon Arts Commission and The Ford Family Foundation.

ELEMENTS

Ceiling view of Elements, art installation by Ethan Rose

2015
Permanent Installation

Location
Microsoft Campus, Redmond, WA
‍
Materials
Speakers, Weather Station, Electronics

2015
‍Permanent Installation

Location
Microsoft Campus, Redmond, WA
‍
Materials
Speakers, Weather Station, Electronics

Elements is a permanent, site-specific sound installation created for the lobby of a Microsoft building designed by Bora Architects. The piece transforms real-time weather data—wind, temperature, precipitation, and sunlight—into a continually shifting musical composition. A rooftop weather station feeds live data to custom software, which triggers sounds through more than one hundred ceiling-mounted speakers.
‍
By translating the building’s immediate environment into sound, Elements turns the lobby into a threshold between natural and built worlds, allowing visitors to hear the weather unfolding outside.

ENTWINED

Painting from Entwined, art installation by Ethan Rose

2015
Exhibition Installation

Location
PDX Contemporary, Portland, OR
‍
Materials
Speakers, Electronics, String

‍2015
‍Exhibition Installation

Location
PDX Contemporary, Portland, OR
‍
‍Materials
Speakers, Electronics, String

‍

Entwined explores the physical and visual dimensions of sound. Tones traveling through speakers are transferred into taut strings, visibly animating sonic vibration in space. As the recorded composition plays, each string—attached directly to a speaker’s surface—oscillates in response, rendering sound as motion and form.

The installation invites viewers to experience the immediacy of vibration and its trace over time. Throughout the exhibition, the strings tremble to layers of multi-channel audio, while accompanying ink drawings record the same process in another medium. In the studio, ink-soaked strings were positioned above paper and set into vibration, producing a series of drawn impressions—sound translated into mark.

All audible tones were derived from recordings of bassist Sam Howard, whose bowed performances were electronically transformed into the composition that drives the installation. The work cycles between origin and result: sound becomes motion, motion becomes image, and the sound of strings returns, transformed, to the strings themselves.

HERE & THERE

2012
Exhibition Installation

Location
Kernel Festival, Desio, Italy
‍
Materials
Porcelain, Transducers, Electronics

‍2012
‍Exhibition Installation

Location
Kernel Festival, Desio, Italy
‍
Materials
Porcelain, Transducers, Electronics

‍

An outdoor sound installation of handmade porcelain bowls suspended from trees, Here & There creates a spatialized listening experience shaped by both design and environment. Each bowl, fitted with a transducer, acts as a speaker playing back its own transformed recording.Originally recorded in a controlled studio setting, the sound of each bowl being struck was altered and reintroduced on-site, blending composed tones with the surrounding natural soundscape. The result is an installation where each object maintains its distinct visual and sonic identity while participating in a collective outdoor composition—studio and world intertwined.
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Originally commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Craft in partnership with the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

CODE BLUE

2011
Original Score

Director
Urszula Antoniak

‍

IMDB

2011
‍Original Score

Director
Urszula Antoniak

IMDB

A devoted nurse tends to her patients with near-saintly compassion—sometimes guiding them into death itself. When she becomes entangled with a neighbor through an act of voyeurism, her world of moral certainty begins to unravel.

‍Code Blue premiered at the Cannes Film Festival as part of Un Certain Regard.

REFLECTION

‍2012
‍Exhibition Installation

Location
ESS, Chicago, IL
PDX Contemporary, Portland, OR
‍
Materials
Bells, Speakers, Electronics

‍2012
‍Exhibition Installation

Location
ESS, Chicago, IL

PDX Contemporary, Portland, OR
‍
Materials
Bells, Speakers, Electronics

‍

Reflection pairs a series of electro-mechanical bells with corresponding speakers, each playing a reversed recording of its bell. At the exact moment the playback ends, the real bell strikes—creating a seamless temporal shift between recorded sound and physical action.This precise exchange transforms the familiar resonance of the bell into a dialogue between presence and reproduction. The spatial arrangement enhances this effect, drawing the listener into the liminal zone where the sound moves between object and echo, material and memory.

PAPER MUSIC

Wide view of Paper Music, art installation by molo and Ethan Rose

Interior view of Paper Music, art installation by molo and Ethan Rose

2012
Exhibition Installation

Location
Design Week, Milan, IT‍
ICFF, New York, NY
‍
Materials
molo Softwalls, Speakers, Electronics

‍2012
‍Exhibition Installation

Location
Design Week, Milan, IT
‍
ICFF, New York, NY
‍
Materials
molo Softwalls, Speakers, Electronics

‍

A collaboration between Ethan Rose and designers Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen of molo, Paper Music activates molo’s flexible paper structures through sound. Using transducers instead of traditional speakers, Rose composed a sixteen-channel piece that transmits musical and paper-based sounds through the layered material of the softwalls, turning them into resonant instruments.The first iteration debuted during Milan Design Week at the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia, where yellow softwalls formed a passageway of vibrating sound and light. A second version, Paper

Music for a Blue Room, was presented at ICFF in New York. There, a new composition animated blue paper walls within a gently spiraling enclosure, surrounding visitors in an intimate, immersive field of sound and material.

BRIDGE CAROLS

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2010
Album

Label
Holocene (USA)
Headz (JP)
Baskaru (EU)

2010
‍Album

Label
Holocene (USA)
Headz (JP)
Baskaru (EU)
‍

Bridge Carols is a collaborative album created with Laura Gibson, centered on the exploration of voice, stream-of-consciousness lyrical improvisation, and processed sound. Through a process of improvisation and editing, the two artists developed methods of shared authorship, weaving together their unique sensibilities into a series of dream-like songs.

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TRANSFERENCE

Close-up of Transference, art installation by Ethan Rose and Andy Paiko

2009
Exhibition Installation

Location
Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, ORHouston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TXMuseum of Craft and Design, San Francisco
‍
Materials
Glass, Motors, Electronics

‍2009
‍Exhibition Installation

Location
Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR

Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX

Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco
‍
‍Materials
Glass, Motors, Electronics

‍

Created in collaboration with glass artist Andy Paiko, Transference explores the material and aural properties of glass through movement and light. The work reimagines forgotten glass instruments such as the Glass Armonica and Glass Harp, which once used water and friction to create singing tones. In the installation, dozens of spinning glass bowls rotate in a gently unpredictable sequence, combining their shimmering visual motion with ethereal sound. Each vessel’s tone and resonance shaped its placement and tuning, allowing the material itself to act as a third collaborator.
‍
Originally commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Craft in partnership with the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

NORTHERN SKY CIRCLE

Overhead view of Northern Sky Circle, art installation by molo and Ethan Rose

Night shot of Northern Sky Circle, art installation by molo and Ethan Rose

2009
Exhibition Installation
‍
Location
Freeze Project, Anchorage, AK

Materials
Snow, Speakers, Electronics

2009
Exhibition Installation
‍
Location
Freeze Project, Anchorage, AK

Materials
Snow, Speakers, Electronics

A site-specific collaboration with Molo Design, Northern Sky Circle was created during a weeklong stay in Anchorage, Alaska. Molo constructed a large outdoor snow structure while Ethan composed a four-channel sound piece to accompany it. The composition draws from environmental recordings—snow falling from trees, creaking tidal ice, and winter bird calls—alongside studio-recorded sounds of icicles dripping onto a glockenspiel and interactions with frozen materials. These sounds were digitally layered with autoharp, percussion, and harmonica to reflect the textures of the Alaskan winter landscape.
The installation’s speakers played into the night as visitors gathered around a fire within the snowy enclosure.
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Commissioned by the Alaska Design Forum in association with the International Gallery of Contemporary Art and the Anchorage Museum, and supported in part by the Oregon Arts Commission.

NOTHING PERSONAL

2009
‍Original Score

Director
Urszula Antoniak
‍

IMDB

2009
‍Original Score

Director
Urszula Antoniak

IMDB

A woman abandons her former life to wander alone across the Irish countryside, where she encounters a reclusive hermit.

‍Nothing Personal premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, where it received six awards including Best First Feature.

OAKS

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2009
Album

Label
Holocene (USA)
Headz (JP)
Baskaru (EU)

2009
‍‍Album

Label
Holocene (USA)
Headz (JP)
Baskaru (EU)
‍

All of the sounds on Oaks originate from a 1926 Wurlitzer Theater Organ housed at the Oaks Park Roller Rink in Portland, Oregon. Originally installed at the Broadway Theater to accompany silent films, the organ’s pneumatically controlled pipes, tuned percussion, and built-in sound effects were recorded and electronically transformed to form the pieces on this album. The project culminated in an album release event featuring a live organ performance while the audience roller-skated through Oaks Park.

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MOVEMENTS

Gallery view of Movements, art installation by Ethan Rose

2008
Exhibition Installation

Location
Ambach & Rice Gallery, Seattle, WATBA Festival, Portland, OR
‍
Materials
Music Box Movements, Electronics

‍2008
‍Exhibition Installation

Location
Ambach & Rice Gallery, Seattle, WA

TBA Festival, Portland, OR
‍
‍Materials
Music Box Movements, Electronics

‍

Movements features over one hundred altered music boxes powered by electric motors and mounted directly to the gallery walls. Each box was modified by bending back selected tines to reduce and transform its melody, turning mass-produced mechanisms into individualized instruments. Timers activate the groups of music boxes at shifting intervals, producing an ever-changing composition that uses the walls themselves as resonant surfaces. The result is a delicate, mechanical chorus that envelops the listener in a constantly evolving field of sound.

PLAYER PIANO

2008
Exhibition Installation

Location
Tilt Project Space, Portland, OR
‍
Materials
Player Piano, Speakers, Electronics

‍2008
‍Exhibition Installation

Location
Tilt Project Space, Portland, OR
‍
‍Materials
Player Piano, Speakers, Electronics

‍

In Player Piano, a 1926 reproducing piano is modified to play a looping paper roll altered with bits of tape that block selected notes from sounding. The resulting sparse, rhythmic composition emphasizes both the tonal and mechanical qualities of the instrument. These sounds are then processed and rebroadcast through speakers into the same space, creating layers of repetition and transformation that shift continuously over time.
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Funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council.

PARANOID PARK

2007
‍Soundtrack

Director
Gus Van Sant
‍

IMDB

2007
‍Soundtrack

Director
Gus Van Sant
‍

IMDB

An unsolved murder at Portland's infamous Paranoid Park brings detectives to a local high school, propelling a young skater into a moral dilemma where he must deal with the consequences of his own actions.

Paranoid Park premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in competition for the Palme d’Or, and was awarded the 60th Anniversary Prize.

SPINNING PIECES

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2007
Album

Label
Locust (USA)
Headz (JP)

2007
‍Album

Label
Locust (USA)
Headz (JP)
‍

Spinning Pieces gathers nearly five years of limited-edition sound art releases with Locust Music, presenting a curated chronicle of Ethan’s work with automated instruments. The album includes three compositions—Singing Tower, The Dot and the Line, and Miniature & Sea—featuring automated carillon, player piano, and music box respectively, all previously available only in small art editions.

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SINGING TOWER

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2007
Album
Limited Edition

Label
Locust (USA)

2007
‍Album
Limited Edition

Label
Locust (USA)
‍

Singing Tower is a short-run, object-based release designed with packaging that directly references its source material. The composition centers on a single instrument—an automated carillon housed in the Hoover Tower at Stanford University. Recordings of both the resonant church bells and the mechanical apparatus that plays them were transformed to form the piece. The hand-assembled packaging, containing a 3" CD, mirrors the perforated metal roll used to automate the bells.

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CEILING SONGS

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2006
Album

Label
Locust (USA)
Headz (JP)

2006
‍Album

Label
Locust (USA)
Headz (JP)
‍

Ceiling Songs are made from the ground up. Sources include player pianos, music boxes, strings, brass, percussion & electronics.

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THE DOT AND THE LINE

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2004
Album
Limited Edition

Label
Locust (USA)

2004
‍Album
Limited Edition

Label
Locust (USA)
‍

...The Dot & The Line... is an object-based limited edition release pairing sound and form. For this piece, vintage player piano reels were manually altered—notes subtracted and patterns disrupted—then played back on a foot-pump-driven piano. The result captures both the sound of the piano and the physical rhythm of its mechanism. Each 3" CDR is encased in a hand-cast resin box, wrapped in player piano paper, and designed to evoke the materials and methods used to create the composition.

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MINIATURE & SEA

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2003
Album
Limited Edition

Label
Locust (USA)

2003
‍Album
Limited Edition

Label
Locust (USA)
‍

Miniature & Sea is a handcrafted limited release that merges composition, sculpture, and mechanical sound. The work was created using manipulated mechanical music boxes and audio captured through an optical film reader. Each edition is housed in a metal tin containing a uniquely altered music box, numbered insert, acrylic-framed title, segment of optical film, and bubble wrap. Every piece is distinct - each altered music box produces a one-of-a-kind sonic result.

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Ethan Rose - Composer & Artist