Play the System

Play the System
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is a platform for parametric design in graphic design. It documents the work of students and teachers at the Department of Design at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW), who are investigating the significance of the system as a conceptual model and design method under the title “Parametric Design in Graphic Design.”

Design is less about intuitive, even ingenious “strokes of genius” and more about a holistic and rule-based (systemic and systematic) process of gaining knowledge and shaping form. It is becoming increasingly important to be able to design dynamic systems that both guide and inspire the design process.

Parametric design refers to this design in and of systems—with rules, their modes of operation, and systematic manipulability. The research project, led by Prof. Heike Grebin, is an integral part of teaching and aims to raise awareness of design as a performative process.

Play the System brings together selected study projects in which the system plays an important role as a design method – whether analog or digital. The works are created in a fruitful symbiosis of theory, design, and technology. Socially relevant issues and positions from philosophy, art, and avant-garde design from around 1900 to the present day are repeatedly discussed.

Play the System is an invitation to become aware of the systemic competence of graphic design and to gain the maturity to use the tools of digital design critically.

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The decision has been made. You are transported to an island against your will. As soon as you arrive, you realize that the structures of this island will penetrate the finest details of your existence. From now on, you have to obey; otherwise, you will never see land again. Your individuality must give way to a number. How you are treated depends on the level you are assigned to. Limits and coercion dominate your everyday life and replace freedom and self-determination. You are trapped in an enormous apparatus of power from which there is no escape, and to which every action and every behavior is subjected. Welcome to the prison archipelago.

In a prison, complex power structures are required to enforce discipline and order in prisoners so that they can once again become part of a functioning society. But how far do these structures penetrate the prisoners' existence? Anonymity, boundaries, and coercion dominate their everyday lives and replace individuality, freedom, and self-determination. The result is an enormous apparatus of power from which there is no escape and to which every action and behavior is subjected.