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Site-specific public art can be seen on campus this week as the culmination of an interdisciplinary course titled Where Here Is.

All installations but one will end Dec. 16, according to Robin Hill, associate art professor, who taught the class through the Department of Art and Art History.

Thanks to the enthusiasm of the arboretum staff, A Room With a View, a camera obscura housed in structure that looks like a small shack, will remain open to the public through the holidays, she said.

Working under Hill's guidance, the students collaborated to fabricate five artworks that focus on the idea of the local.

By mining each site for meaning -- social, cultural, aesthetic, historical -- these works of art are focused on the transformation of site to place, Hill said.

The collaborative teams included students from studio art, art history, landscape design, geology, psychology and technocultural studies.

Here are the project names and locations:

Common Ground, on the Quad:

The students who created this project chose to embrace the dynamics of collaboration as their theme by creating a giant nest with four parts. They will perform scheduled daily tasks that mirror the social interaction of the community during the installation.

The student team : Luz Sanchez, Alexander Laracuente, Julie Johnson and Catherine Meyers.

A Room With a View, on the north side of Lake Spafford, in the arboretum:

This project is a walk-in camera obscura that allows the viewer to see a projection of the landscape just outside. Historically used as a tool for painters in the 17th century, this sculpture provides an ephemeral optical experience, one that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary.

The student team: Mary Yurkutat, Kristin Parker, Traian Iosif and Tracey Link.

String Rain, in the breezeway between the Memorial Union and Freeborn Hall:

This project investigates the drain structures of the MU by inserting string configurations where rain would fall. This whimsical sculpture draws on the pre-existing design to create compelling and unexpected geometric configurations in space.

The schedule is as follows:

Friday, Dec. 14 -- 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Cocoa Chat Cafe

Sunday, Dec. 16 -- 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Cocoa Chat Cafe

The student team: Maria Toupadakis, Torres Keyna, Mark Miller and Carissa Buschmann.

A Face to a Place, for Shields Library, Freeborn Hall, Cowell Student Health Center and Mrak Hall:

At each of those locations earlier this week, student Ryan Bulis wore large-scale masks that served as portraits of the building namesakes: Peter J. Shields, Stanley B. Freeborn, Samuel Henry Cowell and Emil Mrak. The public art project invited spectators to have their pictures taken with the famous people from the past, and to consider the notable contributions that the namesakes made to the community during their tenures.

Bulis collaborated with Serena Monts and Anna Ng, who had planned to take turns wearing the masks, but the plaster objects proved to be too heavy.

Rudd's Rat Lab, at Kerr Hall:

A nonhierarchical art exhibition in an abandoned space was the goal of this project. The students have resurrected a forlorn abandoned space in Kerr Hall to generate a feeling of community as well as a voice for underrepresented visual artists in the area.

"Their call to artists is part of their social experiment, and the final product will be as rich as the degree to which their call is responded to," Hill said.

The student team: Tyler McGinn, Matthew Cool, Tony Coppi and Stephanie Doeing.