Reliable networked information devices are easier to find these days than a decent pair of shoes. The cost of hardware seems to fall in correlation to the increase in computational power of the software. Now if only this invisible power was embedded into the fabric of our built environment, our cities would have the ability to sense and respond to information.

This exhibition proposes ways to do just that. It's curated by Mark Shepard, who is assistant professor of Architecture and Media Study at the University at Buffalo, he's also the editor of the Situated Technologies pamphlet series. Organized by the Architectural League of New York, it features five commissioned projects that demonstrate what a “smart” city might look like and how it could work.

One project is Amphibious Architecture, a collaboration between David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang (directors of the Living Architecture Lab at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation) and Natalie Jeremijenko (director of xdesign Environmental Health Clinic at New York University). To bring awareness to how shared urban ecologies might be governed, the team created an interface for citizens to interact with their bodies of water.

Two networks of floating interactive tubes are being installed this weekend at sites in New York’s East and Bronx rivers. The tubes submerge sensors below water and hoist an array of lights above. The sensors monitor water quality, presence of fish, and human interest in the river ecosystem. An SMS interface allows citizens to text-message the fish and to receive real-time information about the river. The lights respond to the sensors, creating a feedback loop and making visible the invisible: the relationship between inhabitants of a shared environment and an unmapped ecology.

The gallery will exhibit the team's sample sensors, a transparent canoe, real-time readings (via projections) of the sensors, and other documentation. So if you're in New York and want to know how the water is, for a short time this fall you'll be able to text message a fish.

Toward the Sentient City opens Thursday, September 17 and runs until November 7 at the gallery of The Architectural League, 457 Madison Avenue, Manhattan.