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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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p376 The Society of the Spectacle

Sophie Bohne's poster series aims to draw attention to the French philosopher Guy Debord. Although his social and media-critical work, The Society of the Spectacle, was published in 1967, it is more relevant today than ever. The social problems that Debord criticizes read like descriptions of our time—our constant interconnectedness and consumption of impressions. “The whole life of societies in which modern conditions of production prevail appears as an immense collection of spectacles. Everything that was directly experienced has escaped into imagination.” The spectacle is the mass media, which explain the world to us and create the impression of a society connected across space and time. Real life is replaced by a dangerous simulation in which authenticity is displaced. In the spectacle, the economy has taken on a life of its own, and a performance is sold through generated images and ideas. In the search for fulfillment through the consumption of images, ideas, commodities, and interaction with the spectacle, attention itself has become a commodity. With her work, she wants to raise our awareness of our participation in the spectacle—through our constant Instagram scrolling or our ‘watching one YouTube video after another’. Because the spectacle actively changes our perception, interaction, and decision-making.