NORTHAMPTON - Inside the bright, open room off the main hallway of the Smith College Campus Center, Meg Rotzel sat hunched over a sewing machine late yesterday morning.

A few feet away, John Osorio-Buck drilled into a piece of old fabric bolt as Jessica Rylan sat at a table building a synthesizer out of old electronic parts and Christy Georg fine-tuned a sculpture to transmit sound.

Welcome to Project AIR (artist in research), an interactive art exhibition featuring the four Boston artists exploring ideas of consumption and production in the art world and in contemporary society.

The five-day exhibition began Monday and ends tomorrow with a closing event 7 - 9 p.m. The artists spend 11 a.m.-10 p.m. each day creating their art and welcoming visitors to observe, make comments and participate.

"What we're interested in is seeing if this process works and what the artists and audience gets out of having an open studio," said Rotzel, who is also the project's curator.

Rotzel is sewing bags and wallets out of pieces of cloth and selling them to students and other visitors. Each bag and wallet has a label that reads: "made especially for you by me." Buyers are able to choose the cloth and discuss a price for their home-made item, which brings about a conversation about what the labor, art, time, and materials are worth.

Osorio-Buck is using a drill, saw, duct tape, plastic piping, garment bags filled with shredded paper and other recycled materials to create sustainable, temporary architecture. He is investigating protective shelters that can be easily constructed and used for the homeless and refugees or as a playhouse for children.

Rylan said she will use her synthesizer in one of her future sound installations. She uses obsolete and antique electronic components to build her instruments.

The four artists are all residency alumni of Berwick Research Institute's artist in research program in Boston. Their visit is sponsored by the student Arts Resource Committee on campus.

"I think it's really great when people can observe the process of making art instead of just seeing the end product," said Erin L. Murray of Northampton, who stopped by rooms 103 and 104 to observe.

Georg was busy perfecting a phonograph based on one originally built by Thomas Edison. The inventor was deaf when he invented the phonograph, but would bite into its metal, which then vibrated the bones in his jaw and inner ear, creating a sound inside his head.

"I like to give people an experience to take away with them- a memory," Georg said. "Everybody hears something different."

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