Using mixed media, like photography, film, music, sound and more, students in a cinema and photography class are presenting four historic sites in Carbondale to the community.

The event starts at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Big Muddy IMC at 214 Washington St., where a map of the sites will be provided. The sites will be: Tuscan Lodge, Town Square, Buckminster Fuller Dome and Woody Hall.

"Each project is different, and there are different elements," said Cade Bursell, who teaches the course, Advanced Topics in Film Production. "So some people might use photographs, some people might use film or video, some people will use objects, structures and materials."

The interesting aspect is how the students focus on the difference between site and place, and how multimedia is used to portray the place, Bursell said.

"The difference between the site and place would be the site is the physical structure," said Ramah Malebranche, a senior from Haiti studying music. "The place aspect has to do with history, the history of the place, the people involved currently and the people in the past and what it means in the community it's in."

The first stop in the tour will be the Tuscan Lodge, which is one of the top 10 endangered buildings in Illinois.

Jason Rosentreter, a senior from Carlinville studying cinema, plans on incorporating community involvement into his project. He will have a book for people to write down what they remember at the lodge, their feelings or what they want to do with the lodge in the future.

The Tuscan Lodge served many purposes through its lifespan, including housing several grocery stores, restaurants, barbershops and a teen club.

"What I'm trying to do in my piece is kind of address the past, present and possible future of the lodge," Rosentreter said.

The next stop on the tour, Town Square, will be highlighted by Eric Gant, a graduate student from New Mexico studying cinema and photography and Megan Elcock, a graduate student from New Mexico studying sculpture.

Gant and Elcock plan to place six to eight voting booths throughout the square where patrons can answer questions anonymously about the town square and community. "My goal is that they start to question themselves and the function of the town square and the sense of community that Carbondale has," Gant said.

Malebranche and Nathan Maxey, a junior from Springfield studying cinema and photography will use projections, sound, and light to portray the ideals and concept behind the Buckminster Fuller Dome.

The geodesic dome, located on the corner of Forest and Cherry streets, was named after its designer who taught and researched at SIUC.

"It's really connected to Buckminster Fuller and a lot of his ideas about the way this dwelling and a lot of his designs could be used," Maxey said. "He had a really global perspective about how all these dwelling could be applied."

"Mayday," the final installation of the event, is at Woody Hall.

Deborah Webster, a senior from Chicago studying cinema and photography and Charle Luckett, a senior from New York studying cinema and photography will focus on the riots that took place at Woody Hall in May 1970 and use performance art, video and sound, Luckett said.

"I just tried to put myself in the situation of the students back in 1970 because there were many factors that went into what led to the riots," Webster said. "I try to get the best interpretation I can get without a biased interpretation."

Along with the artistic installation at each place, yellow stickers will identify important objects throughout town. People associated with the projects, community members and public figures will place the signs throughout town.

People who attend the event can type the code on each yellow sticker into their cell phones, and then receive a text message from the person regarding the object that the arrow is pointing to.

"The Yellow Arrow Project adds other voices to the project," Bursell said. "People can place the yellow arrow and then say something about these other sites, so when people are on this walking tour from site to site and they see a yellow arrow, they can stop and call up and gain a new perspective on something along the way that someone in the community really cares about."

The focus of the class is to examine the role of the artist in the community and how to create dialog within the community, said. She believes community-based work is really important.

"This is the type of class that made me want to come to college," Webster said. "This is the first class that we have gotten a chance to be artists."

The concept behind the project is to bring the community together and to exchange information through the presentation of vision and change in the projects, Luckett said.

"The community, in a way, is the subject. If the community didn't come, then it was pointless," Maxey said. "It doesn't really work without the community."

Reporter Laura Teegarden can be reached at laura_teegarden@dailyegyptian.com