Arduino is a open-source electronics prototyping tool based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

With Arduino things become creatures, which should be also interesting for designer and not only engineers. With arduino it is now possible to create objects for which you previously needed help from your technicians or programmers. Now you can do almost everything by yourself.

The exhibition “Let’s Get Physical - arduino a new material for design?” builds a first step into this direction by showing directly in the context of DMY Berlin 2009, that the proclaimed is possible and intends to inspire more designers to use this new tool for their work.

The wider context of arduino is called “Physical Computing” from where also the title of this exhibition is inspired. It is a scientific discipline to connect the real world with the symbols and programms of the computer and other electronics. New interfaces between humans and things become possible with it.

The objects, which are made possible and prototype with Arduino move in-between our physical reality (temparature, pressure, acceleration and so on) and the symbolic (code, programs, software). So called algorhythms (algorithms and rhythms), play an important role in their interactions.

curated by Shintaro Miyazaki (Institute for Algorhythmics)