For years, Richard Lerman's art has explored the sounds of things, from the everyday-what do ants sound like? the wind? red flowers?-to the historical: what sounds haunt former internment camps? Nazi camps? Using homemade transducers and microphones, Lerman conducts the noises of particular places at particular moments, recording the "performance" on super-8 film or video. Tonight's program includes his recent Death Valley Walks (1997, 8 mins) and Eight Pieces from the Sonoran Desert (1997, 30 mins); Manzanar and Dachau (1994, with Mona Higuchi, 10 mins), an exploration of the Japanese American internment camp and of Dachau, which was liberated by Japanese American soldiers whose families were still interned in the U.S.; and Tule Lake (1995, with Mona Higuchi, 5 mins), the site of another Japanese American internment camp. Lerman will perform Music for Plinky and Straw (1985, c. 15 mins, with video), of which he says, "Composed in 1985 for hand-built transducers, the piece uses a tape delay built from two Sony Walkmen to extend the sonorities. These are the same microphones and transducers used in the video tapes screened this evening."-Kathy Geritz