A certain power of like-minded but not same-minded thinking appears to be at work among artists in the Can(n)on Studios compound, and on the evidence of the current Arts Fund Gallery show "Stone Soup," and another intriguing group show at the Atkinson Gallery a few years back, something is abuzz in this property in Old Town Goleta. Can(n)on-ite artists Elizabeth Folk, Rafael Gaete, Kimberly Hahn, Marco Pinter and James Van Arsdale follow separate and disparate aesthetics paths in their work, but heed a conceptual creed in their work, to personal ends - or, more accurately, points along the journey to ends.

The exhibition title itself refers to the folk tale about wily, hungry visitors to a town whose quest for food and attention is achieved through the semi-trickster method of starting a soup with a magic stone, luring villagers to add their own more substantive ingredients. In terms of this show, the readily accessible and seductive elements of the art on view (and sometimes in motion) lures us into an immediate appreciation, upon which the more abstract and abstruse ideas and encoded messages are compounded.

In the case of Ms. Hahn's "Disconnected," the artist appeals to the senses while confounding expectations of gallery context or medium-association. Blurry abstract prints set on a ragged-edged black paper crawl from the floor and up the wall, re-orienting the gallery space and experience. It's a simple expressive equation, yet one with complex dimensions and interpretive possibilities.

Ms. Folk's "Slooot" states its dizzy, socio-political m.o. with another set of parameters, including allusions to the classical tradition of the triptych, video clip shorthand and the luck-of-the-imagistic-draw match montage of Vegas (or Chumash Casino) slot machines. At a given moment in this chance-y operation, we might see crisp shots of ripe produce next to a woman whose head is wrapped (too much information), or a jiggling cow tongue, for visceral, corporeal impact. Textural asides of newspaper strips add another resonance of reality, spliced, diced and mashed into visually noisy pulp.

Movement takes on a more real-time-y theatrical character in the elaborate piece "Pas de Trois: Adagio," from robotics-minded artist Mr. Pinter (who played an important role in this gallery's kinetic-centric "Ruckus" show). The installation work, with computer programming pulling strings and whirring in the background, combines elements of dance and robotics into a kinetic cerebral circus, with a red rope dangling from brass poles indicating the presence of show biz. Scarves and rope are triggered into choreographed action, with a phantom moveable protrusion behind a white screen suggesting both the artifice of cinema and a hint of a human finger on the pulsations of the piece.

Pop cultural associations are present but partially subtler in manifestation in the work of Mr. Van Arsdale (also a musician, whose band Heavy Cosmetic Kinetic played at the show's opening). Psychedelia and post-hippie graphics and materials sneak into the picture with the mandala-like painting "Spinning Brass Knuckles with Thrown Star" (the objects implied being anything but innocent or fit for meditation), and "Metal Shield Arc Bolt," made from denim and with a comix-related, silver lightning bolt-shaped zinger in its design.

Mr. Van Arsdale's art, with its tentacles in the art historical orbits of both Op and Pop Art, makes an easy segue into the adjacent art on the wall. Chilean-born artist Mr. Gaete's "72 Colors" is all about perception, sly painting practice and the color wheel of justice. A latticework of rainbow-colored vertical stripes are painted atop larger horizontal black bands, and the juxtaposition of vivid against monochrome, crisp against blurry activates an almost vertiginous effect in the view, an optical trickery at once seductive and with orientation-wavering quesiness.

Suffice to say, there are some heady concepts afloat in a certain GPS coordinate in Goleta, and they translate well, as a group, to a gallery wall on the other side of town, on the far side of conventional art.