Get out your white smocks and tuning forks. The UCSD Arts Library will present what's being billed as an "Impromptu Sci-Fi Radio & Film Laboratory." The one-day event will run from 11 am-5 pm this Saturday at the Geisel Library's futuristic instrument lab.

Participants are encouraged to be their own Foley artists and experiment with a wide variety of audio-enhancing devices such as synthesizers, theremins, and many more. Throughout the day, videos of classic (and not-so-classic) films will be projected in the library's high-definition screening rooms, where you can choose your own sounds to overscore and "enhance" the live screenings.

I'm not sure how I feel about experiments in interactive cinema. While it isn't a Brew & View or the unclean Mystery Science Theater, where audience participation is encouraged, it's still something akin to the Louvre placing a Winky Dink screen across the Mona Lisa and encouraging patrons to add a moustache or beauty mark.

Lighten up, Scott. It's not as if the sound effects will be permanently added to the Library of Congress' master print. And gosh only knows how many time I have fantasized about dropping Three Stooges sound effects into some of cinema's direst moments. (Imagine what a well-placed "UHH!" would add to Stephen Boyd falling off his chariot during the climactic race in Ben-Hur.) Let the kids have their fun!

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