How else to stimulate ideas at a Research I university but with electronic/acoustic multimedia works based on 19th-century science? Nelson Gallery acting curator Chris Daubert has installed three pieces by Paul DeMarinis, a Bay Area electronic composer/sculptor. The most elaborate is a three-part work that receives e-mail and reads it one letter at a time through alphabetic telegraph receivers: 26 talking washbasins, 26 dancing skeletons and 26 electrolic jars with metal electrodes in the form of letters that oscillate and bubble when electricity is passed through them. The other two pieces are Gray Matter, a bathtub on which visitors can play scales, and Grind Snaxe Blind Apes, in which an artificial monkey paw draws portraits with a laser. If you’d like to send an e-mail message to be read by The Messenger, the address is nelsongallery@ucdavis.edu. The exhibition ends Friday, May 19.