Listen up: coming soon to Lincoln Road in South Beach will be the first outdoor sound art gallery, thanks to Gustavo Matamoros and his South Florida Composers Alliance, a Knight Arts Challenge winner. All the pieces are (almost) in place to experience the Listening Gallery in front of ArtCenter/South Florida, a 24-channel installation emanating from 24 very small — several inches at best and super high-tech — speakers attached to the roof and awning of the building. It may be the first of its kind anywhere in the world.

Matamoros, who has tirelessly been working with experimental sound arts through projects such as the iSAW workshops and the Subtropics Experimental Music festival since the mid-’80s, can’t hold back his excitement about this new venture. First off, he wants people to know sound art really is music, and it really is art. Just like a more traditional visual arts gallery, there will be curated shows, commissioned pieces and, in a sense, “group” exhibits.

So what will all of this sound like?

Matamoros says he will be working with some old collaborators who have appeared at the Subtropics festival for several works; other pieces will be from its extensive archives. As the ArtCenter stands somewhat alone on the road, with no restaurants directly surrounding it, people will easily hear the sound art. As Matamoros says, that can expose as many as 7 million people a year to something they may never have encountered before. He describes sound art as a previously hard-to-access art form — in museums or other private spaces, the experience can be very limiting, in hours, in access. This will be the opposite: totally public and 24 hours a day.

He also wants to use the fairly unused front foyer (before the actual door to the building), straddling it with two LED screens that may show video art, may guide people to the background of the current sound art or any combo thereof.

Matamoros says with this project he is less interested in community commentary than in community design. “I want people to interact with the actual architecture, hear it. This is about bringing people in and creating a community.” So part of the mission is also to literally get strollers inside the ArtCenter building, to bring higher visibility to the visual art there.

Like painting or sculpture, sound needs to be explored and, in a sense, understood before it is appreciated. Matamoros hopes to open up this aural world to the general public, making it a must-hear part of any art walk.

Start listening for it come the end of the summer at ArtCenter/South Florida, 800 Lincoln Road. Or, to start listening and learning a little earlier, visit subtropics.org.