FARMINGTON – Honking horns, flashing lights, revving engines? No, it’s not rush-hour traffic.

An automobile orchestra played an original piece, “Incarnation,” Wednesday at the University of Maine at Farmington. The performance closed a day of student presentations, the 11th annual Michael D. Wilson Symposium.

Many participants in the orchestra, mostly from the campus community, including faculty, students and staff, returned to play their vehicles in this third performance of the automobile orchestra.

“It’s fun and my 4-year-old twins are enjoying watching for the colored flags,” said Julia Daly who teaches geology. “It’s something different,” she said.

Thirty-one vehicles, all different makes and models, formed a circle in a college parking lot on High Street. Participants gathered prior to the two performances to receive directions, a score that was pretty easy to follow, said music student, Ben Prentiss, as he stood by his 1969 Dodge Coronet along with partner Grace Hilmer. The car didn’t have a radio so his participation was slightly limited but it was still fun and totally different, he said of the experience.

For the first two years, vehicles were parked in different lots around campus, said conductor Phil Carlsen, who composed the piece. The cars were separated to toss musical ideas back and forth from one parking log to another.

He then realized that drivers in distant lots were not really part of the action so the genesis for this performance was for everyone to have an equal experience, he said earlier Wednesday. Mulling ideas in his head, he envisioned a 90-foot circle of 35 cars in one parking lot.

Composing the piece grew from that image of sounds being made from around the circle. Then came the logistical details of finding participants and organizing the use of the lot, he said.

Carlsen conducted his piece by changing colored flags as he led the automobile musicians through sound-creating actions Wednesday.

He added a skateboarder to skate within the circle. When the skateboarder passed in front of a vehicle, the participant would honk his horn, flash his lights or turn on his radio as planned in the musical score, he said. In places within the piece, members of a “road crew” would twirl a piece of plastic hose. As the hose motion passed by a vehicle the driver would act.

A group of Toyota vehicles played a Toyota chorale, sounding their horns in chords as he conducted the piece. Non-Toyota vehicles ran emergency flashers during the piece while participants clapped.

At one point, participants stood in front of their vehicles with small whizzers or noisemakers in their hands. Marching around the circle a specific number of steps blowing the whizzer, they would stop and read a stanza from a poem, “General Motors Driven to the Brink,” before moving on.

The first performance, “Car Life,” was followed by “Car After Life.” This year’s title “Incarnation,” just might be followed by “Reincarnation,” Carlsen said.