If you're driving through Homestead and fiddling with the car radio, you may hear some unusual sounds.

They're low-power broadcasts, which are heard on the 102.9 FM frequency, and can be picked up in an eight-block radius in Homestead, and heard faintly in the Waterfront shopping development.

The recorded broadcasts, called "Sounds You Never Hear," are the creation of a pair of artists at Carnegie Mellon University: Jon Rubin, an assistant professor of art at CMU, and John Pena, a graduate student in the fine arts art department.

The broadcasts are coming from a small transmitter in a building at 105 E. Eighth Ave. near the Homestead Grays Bridge, the home of Steel Valley Arts Council's new gallery space, Artspace 105.

At one time, it was a radio station, and local disc jockey legend Porky Chedwick worked there That was part of the inspiration for the series, Mr. Rubin said.

"We were interested in the context of radio today," he said. "More and more, it doesn't matter what part of the country you're in, it sounds the same."

They wanted to broadcast sounds that people aren't expecting to hear.

"We wanted to create a small place on the dial where that could occur."

The first was a recording of a bird that has been extinct since the 1980s, the dusky seaside sparrow. The current one, "The sounds of three rivers meeting underwater," was recorded by putting a microphone underwater at the Point.

The broadcasts will continue through tomrorow.