A town amplified with experimental sounds

The historic town of Roosevelt will become a gallery of sound on May 30.

A lotus created by artist Chrisoula Hammad, of Rancocas Woods, for "The Secret Garden of the Jeweled Lotus" that will appear during "Welcome Sound: Audio Art in Roosevelt Homes" on May 30. During "Welcome Sound: Audio Art in Roosevelt Homes" 1-5 p.m., visitors can explore cutting-edge audio art works that have been created by established and emerging artists to transform existing spaces throughout town. The tour features installations in 13 homes and six public spaces.

Locals and tourists seeking the sounds can do so by picking up a hand-drawn map guide to the installation locations at Roosevelt Public School on Route 571. The school will feature a nature photography exhibit by award-winning science teacher Ilene Levine. To complete the day of events, visitors can enjoy music in the Roosevelt amphitheatre, which will host a performance by the "Staten Island Jazz Ensemble" and an open mic after the tour.

Roosevelt resident Victoria Estok, who is currently pursuing a MFA in integrated media arts at Hunter College in New York City, coordinated the day of events.

A 3-D architectural model by 3-D video artist Daniel Iglesia, of New York City. "I've never been a fan of white-walled galleries," she said. "I definitely think it's important to have art and life more integrated through participation."

Estok collaborated with Daniel Iglesia, a New York City artist whose work has been presented at the Lincoln Center and the Onotological- Hysteric Theatre among other galleries and at festivals in the United States, France, Brazil and Spain. They created an installment for the home of Sheila Linz and Steve Bowen at 40 Tamara Drive that features oral history recordings as well overheard conversation recordings and 3-D visuals.

A total of 17 sound artists from Roosevelt, Princeton and New York City created experimental audio works for the house tour. Other participating Rooseveltians include Brad Garton, director of the Columbia University Computer Music Center, and the motherson duo Kate and Wes John- Alder.

The poster created by Roosevelt artist Ben Shahn. Garton, whose recent work has focused upon the real-time use of music performance models in collaboration with Terry Pender and Gregory Taylor in the improvisatory group "PGT," will host sound collaborations with these special guests in his Pine Drive home. The John-Alders, who live at 48 Pine Drive, will feature floating objects amidst ambient sounds in their backyard. Kathleen is a landscape architect who serves as a landscape critic at The Yale School of Architecture and a part-time lecturer at Rutgers University. Wes, who studied computer science at Oberlin College and graduated in 2007, has participated in many public "loudnoise demonstrations," hiked the Appalachian Trail and teaches environmental education in Vermont.

Princeton's Scott Smallwood, whose work attempts to deal with the puzzle of pulling signal out of noise and has been shown in the Issue Project Room in New York City, the 2006 New Instruments for Musical Expression Conference in New York and the Kulturhaus E-Werk in Frieberg, Germany, has developed a solar-powered sound lantern installation for the Roosevelt Solar Village on North Valley Road.

New York-based artist Douglas Irving Repetto, the director of research at Columbia University Computer Music Center and founder of a number of art/communityoriented groups including "Dorkbot: People Doing Strange Things With Electricity" and "Organism: Making Art With Living Systems," will display his sound study of time travel at the Warnick residence on Homestead Lane.

Composer Michelle Nagai, a graduate student in music composition at Princeton University who incorporates composed and improvised music with acoustic instruments, electronics and other media for presentations throughout the United States, Canada and Europe, has put together a sound tour de force for Carol Watchler and Ann Baker's home on Tamara Drive.

The Hammad family from Rancocas Woods invites visitors to locate "The Secret Garden of the Jeweled Lotus" during the tour. Columbia Computer Music Center student Sam Pluta beckons tourists to the Murphy family's geodesic dome for a sound installation based on the concept of a playing card hitting the spokes of a bike wheel.

Other artists featured on the tour include Kevin T. Allen, a filmmaker and sound artist whose films that "navigate the minutia of the everyday" have been featured at the Museum of Modern Art and the Ann Arbor Film Festival; and Andrea Callard, whose latest sound project, "RepositioningMyself in theMarketplace," is a mixture of field recordings and monologue for those who spend time in cars.

"This kind of sound artwork has its niche in New York City," Estok said. "It's very rare to have experimental avanteguarde sound installations in rural New Jersey."

Under the guidance of art teacher Barbara Atwood, Roosevelt Public School students collaborated on artistic interpretations of what "home" means that will be presented in public spaces.

The Roosevelt Arts Project is sponsoring the event rain or shine. Visitors to the town, which is a national historic site founded during the Great Depression as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, will also see the original homes' Bauhaus-style architecture and works by Roosevelt artists Ben Shahn, Jacob Landau and Stefan Martin. The suggested donation is $5. For more information, visit the website www.music.columbia.edu/roo sevelt.