Cell phone ringtones are a big deal: The music trade publication Billboard tracks the country's top ringtone choices in a chart, as it does with hit songs. One of its chart toppers wasn't a song or movie sound bite: it was the sound of the New York Stock Exchange bell -- which artist Teresa Foley found inspiring.

"I was always curious about making my own ringtones, and wondering how that could happen outside the music industry," she says.

The ubiquitous ringtone is part of the audio backdrop of our lives. Usually a snippet of a pop song, movie audio or sound effect, it reveals something about the owner of the cell phone's personality and tastes in entertainment.

Foley is taking that concept to a new level with Locally Toned (www.locallytoned.org), a Web site that is both a collection of free, downloadable ringtones with a local connection and an experiment in creating public art.

Foley, a California native who is now a Pittsburgh-based artist, has worked mainly in video and film, and taught at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. Through her video work, she became interested in audio as a medium.

She launched the ringtone project by asking the question: "What does Pittsburgh sound like, and which of these sounds should be turned into ringtones and made available to the public free of charge?"

"It was really fun to see how people responded to that," she says.

There are more than 80 tones posted on the site, which launched earlier this month. People can download them for free, and they're invited to create new ones to post.

Part of her goal is "to empower people not just to be consumers of the media, but also thinking and making" it.

People can contribute ringtones by calling 412-837-4028 and following the prompts to record their sound. The ringtones have to be 30 seconds or less and can't use any copyrighted material.

Some of Locally Toned ringtone offerings are simple -- a cat meowing, a barking Chihuahua, a bicycle bell.

The bicycle bell is the most popular ringtone on the site, with more than 300 downloads so far, thanks to members of the local cycling community who spread the word through blog and Twitter posts, Foley says.

"The cycling community really likes that as an identifier for what they do." People who've submitted ringtones "have a way of sharing who they are or what the place is that's special with an audio identifier. Community can build around the content. The cyclists are one example of that."

One local celebrity who has contributed a ringtone is Daniel Striped Tiger, the "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" puppet character. The tone is accompanied by Joanne Rogers playing the celeste, a keyboard instrument.

Other purely Pittsburgh tones feature the sound of fireworks at the Point, and people giving the many different spellings of the word "pierogi."

Some of the tones were recorded at local places that mean something to the contributor, like the whirring cappuccino machine and other background noises at the 61C coffee shop in Squirrel Hill. Another captures a busker's performance in a Downtown subway stop.

Some of the tones are very personal. One of Foley's former students recalled growing up in Mt. Lebanon and hearing a neighbor playing clarinet. He submitted a recording of himself playing an accordion-and-clarinet duet with the neighbor on his front porch.

But Locally Toned is far more than a collection of neat ringtones with local associations. The site's blog has photos and stories about the people who created the tones, giving each sound a back story and a deeper context.

One is a collection of recordings in Farsi, submitted by Mehradad "Murrie" Emamzadeh, a first-generation American citizen of Iranian descent. "Neda" is an excerpt from a tribute he wrote in memory of the young woman whose death during protests in Tehran in June was documented on cell phone video.

In his "Are You Free? (Azadee/Azadi)," a traditional Farsi phone greeting that translates as "Are you free?" -- meaning "Do you have time to talk?" -- works on a different level when the listener thinks about the larger meaning of being free.

The ringtone collection is also a form of public art, using sound instead of visual elements like murals or sculptures. The work "performs itself," Foley says, when Locally Toned participants receive calls on their cell phones.

Foley likes the idea of taking the project into public spaces, where so much cell phone use happens. "It's weird sometimes when we're in public places that are a little bit private, and cell phones go off."

At the last Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District, Downtown, she handed out printed art cards with code numbers for downloading different ringtones from the site. She wore a megaphone that amplified ringtones from her cell phone.

The project is supported by an artist's residency with Deeplocal, the Pittsburgh-based mobile software design and development company, and with Encyclopedia Destructiva, a Lawrenceville bookmaking collective. Foley also received a $1,000 grant from the Fine Foundation.

She's researching more foundation and corporate support to keep the project going -- and expanding. She hopes to create a similar site for another city, and to continue to explore the Pittsburgh soundscape in more depth.