Welcome to tender.li

This website is connected to the Physical Computing seminar at the Institute Digital Communication Environments @Basel Academy of Art and Design and gives an introduction to

• basic electronics and circuit design
• prototyping with Arduino
• crafting interactive objects and spaces

#What is Physical Computing?

Physical Computing means creating interactive objects and spaces bridging the complex domains of design, electronics and programming. Hard- and software tools allow connecting advanced technologies with the physical world, for example the open source tools from Arduino. The programming boards and the Arduino IDE (programming interface) make it easy to prototype interactive sensor-actuator systems.

#What is Tender Computing?

In the context of Physical Computing, interactive spaces and objects are often based on the latest technology and adapt to it with clean, rational, and functional design: technology for technology's sake. Tender Computing represents a counter-concept. It concerns the process of designing as well as the outcome. It combines the binary structure of code with a holistic perspective on design, where the “borders” and the “in-betweens” matter.

Tender Computing invites to be tactile, playful, empathic, thoughtful, fragile, critical, wild.

Tender Computing focuses on the process of making, on collaboration and crafting. Crafted materials and industrially manufactured electronics converge into tender objects and thus propose new aesthetics of electronics. Electronics become haptically diverse, sensually re-experienced, and create awareness of how to interact with them.