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 You may be walking down the streets of Denver and suddenly hear a coyote howling beneath the sidewalk. Or a reverberating Tarzan yell. Or a sewer malfunctioning, cat purring, dog panting, kids skateboarding, a drill team, windshield wipers, tiger growling, a bowling ball, tap dancers, or a New York subway conductor shouting, "The delay in Brooklyn-bound service is because of a sick passenger. Trains are now moving." Whatever the aural equivalent of hallucinating is, this isn't it. It's "Soundwalk," one of Denver's newest innovations: sound art. The visitor's first encounter with this new medium might occur at Denver International Airport, on the mini-trains that connect the main terminal with the three concourses. Door chimes play notes of traditional western songs and local radio personalities announce the stops – a pleasant contrast to the usual computer-generated music and voices on subway cars. "One percent of all construction funds for the city must be set aside for public art," explains Mark Leese, senior architect at the Denver Public Works Department. "I think my favorite sound installation in Denver is 'Soundwalk' . . . I get a kick out of watching people's reactions." The City of Denver Public Art Program transformed an urban sidewalk into an acoustic fantasy by installing speakers under six ordinary-looking grates on Curtis Street below the 16th Street Mall. Connected to a tape recorder in an adjacent building, they play 40 to 100 selections per hour, including rumbling, gurgling water that the artist recorded of his mother's washing machine. The creator and electronic wizard behind these sound environments is Denver's Jim Green. "I like to create playful mystery in the environment," he says. "To disorient people and get them out of their routines so they are interacting with each other and their surroundings." Green, a two-time National Endowment for the Arts recipient, says he began experimenting with sound as way to relate art to everyday surroundings. "I use a tape recorder the way a photographer uses a camera, looking for universal experience in the seemingly mundane." His goal is to humanize public spaces, diminishing peoples' feelings of separation. His plan seems to be working. On a recent afternoon, several teenagers on Curtis Street, unable to locate the source of tap dancing on the street, simply joined in, dancing on the grate.
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