It's as if music and visual art have long been gracefully waltzing, always alternating who leads. The 20th century alone witnessed much of the mutual benefit of this dance - proto-postmodernist Marcel Duchamp created music based on unpredictability and chance in the early 1910s. Those ideas would later inspire legendary experimental composer John Cage to score performances based on the amplified sounds of household appliances and - most famously - four minutes and 33 seconds of the sound of the audience itself. The exchange continued when Cage's work burrowed its way into the minds of Fluxus artists, whose "event scores" instructed participants on the execution of performances. Later in the century, Christian Marclay used turntables to create sound collages; his musically inspired sculptures and video pieces would eventually be seen at the Whitney and MoMA. Now, David Byrne, former frontman of the art school-birthed band Talking Heads, is represented by one of New York's most respected galleries and garners widespread acclaim for his sketches, photographs, and other visual art.

RIT's student-run Gallery r adds to this rich tradition with its recent exhibition, "Inspired by Music" (the show closed earlier than scheduled, this past weekend). But instead of musicians making art and vice versa, this show is a diverse sampling of visual work that claims music as its spark. The result is a pastiche of skill-level and execution from across the RIT student community; truly this exhibition has the herky-jerky rhythm of a somewhat clumsy but unselfconscious denizen of the dance floor. But it's that same honest exuberance that cements the show. While still-evolving student work is better judged on its passion than its polish, there are hits here, to be sure.

Erin Busch's painting "Remembering Last Year" depicts a young woman working on a canvas with palpable intent. Her eyes are focused, her hand pushes the brush forward, and her ears are hidden beneath large stereo headphones whose cord is affixed to her arm with blue painters tape. The wire follows her arm to her hand but plugs not into an iPod or stereo, but directly into the wooden tip of her paintbrush. Perhaps an obvious visual metaphor, but nonetheless it perfectly sums up the show's theme with its straightforward imagery.

Over the minimal tick-tock of a metronome, colorful curves expand and contract upon a white background in Charlie Campbell's abstract video work "Cardiac Waltz." The effect is alternately hypnotic and maddening; like the shapes themselves, the viewer is drawn in and pushed out by the image and sound. Wholly inviting is Lindsay Burtner's short rotoscoped animation set to Cat Power's cover of The Velvet Underground's "I Found A Reason." As Chan Marshall's fragile voice tries to accept that "What comes is better than what came before," a young woman removes her red scarf, holds it at arms length, and gives it to the wind. The scarf floats away and she turns, running for the distant horizon. It's a brief, sincere visual that captures the essence of a short, aching song.

Like sound itself, the show wafts beyond the walls of Gallery r's main space and into the ground-floor hallway of 775 Park Avenue. Here you'll find much to see, including Jay Graham's rectangular "Pine Clock," looking more like a prototype than a finished piece, but well on its way to completion. Pencil-sketched phases of the moon arch across the clock face while a Fibonacci spiral fills the lower right. It's a mix of complementary styles; natural forms rendered in copper grace the corners while other decorative metalwork recalls the matter-of-fact geometry of Russian suprematism.

Further down the hall, Nicholas G. Baish's photograph "St. Stephen" appears to capture the darting lines of color generated by a moving prism and calls to mind the boneless shimmy my friend once dubbed "the hippie dance" - a dance where, as she put it, "every part of the body is moving independent of the other parts." Baish's image - likely inspired by the Grateful Dead song of the same name - is uniquely contemporary and nostalgic; it's psychedelic, but doesn't come across as yesteryear's "flower power" warmed over.

Near the end of the corridor, Micheal Serra's compelling and mysterious piece "Burying the Cedar Box" sits neatly upon a wall-mounted shelf. It's an assemblage of items - a box, a flask, a teacup, some loose photographs, a journal, an envelope - anchored by Serra's own panoramic black and white photograph. In it, a man stands in a crumbling, decrepit shack; behind him sits a table upon which rests many of the same objects on the shelf. My eyes darted back and forth from the things before me to the space within the image: there is a rich and powerful narrative here and it is ours to invent. Who is this man? Is he a victim of some tragedy? Has he lost it all and now struggles through his days alone, clinging to fading memories? This is a strong work with great potential; let's hope Serra continues to remind us that much like music has long inspired art, images are the root of imagination. 

Inspired by Music

Gallery r, 775 Park Ave.

Thursday-Friday 2-6 p.m., Saturday-Sunday 1-5 p.m.

242-9470, cias.rit.edu/~galleryr/