Bringing the Urban River to Life

It's a thoughtful incorporation of art, public design and science, in an effort to make a hidden urban environment come alive and engage the attention of residents who might otherwise pass it by without giving so much as a passing thought.

The project has been given the name Amphibious Architecture, and involves a series of floating plastic tube buoys in New York City's East and Bronx rivers. The tubes contain sensors that gather and report data on water quality and the presence of fish. LEDs atop the buoys light up in response to sensor activity.

And the data they collect are sent in the form of texts, written as if from the local fish or beavers. An online comment sent recently to New Scientist by an East River herring let folks know that conditions were "pretty nice down here," adding that dissolved oxygen levels were higher than in previous days.

People everywhere are invited to text the project in order to get the latest updates from what's happening below the surface of the water. Clearly, the project team has the local community primarily in mind in the realization of this installation.

As explained on the project's Web site, the aim is to remove the distance we often find to exist between us and the natural world:

"The aim of [the project] is to simultaneously spark a larger public interest and dialogue about our local waterways.

"Distinctly moving away from the pervasive ‘do-not-disturb’ approach to urban environmentalism, the project encourages curiosity and engagement. ... The project thus creates a dynamic and captivating layer of light above the surface of the river, making visible the invisible through real-time mapping of the new ecology of people, marine life, buildings, and public space."

Photo courtesy of Ajay Tallam, via Wikimedia Commons