Product details
- ISBN 9781835953389
- Dimensions: 150 x 210mm
- Publication Date: 17 Aug 2026
- Publisher: Intellect
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Systems Play: Art, Design and the Future of Humankind explores how contemporary artists and designers are reimagining the world in an age defined by complexity, uncertainty, and systemic interdependence. The book argues that the most compelling creative practices today engage in systems play, strategies that work with emergent patterns, multiplicity, and interconnection to make large-scale systems more legible and more open to change.
It offers an engaging look at how systems play and speculative design can illuminate social challenges and support collective action for the good of humans, animals, and plants. Idea-driven rather than practical, it presents a rich set of multidisciplinary examples that will inspire researchers and artists alike.
Through richly illustrated case studies across fields such as speculative design, immersive installation, and interactive media, it examines how creative work can: expand human perception beyond biological limits; challenge anthropocentric assumptions; reconceive personhood as relational and distributed; rethink family, community, and care as dynamic systems; and reframe our experience of time. Each chapter situates these practices within broader cultural, technological, and ecological contexts, showing how they resist reductive narratives and open space for alternative futures.
Blending critical theory with accessible storytelling, Systems Play positions experimental art and design as more than cultural commentary, providing intellectual and practical blueprints for navigating complexity. It is both a survey of emergent creative approaches and a call to take their insights seriously as tools for reimagining our shared, uncertain world.
Dr. Danielle Barrios-O’Neill is a Reader in Immersive Art and Design at the Royal College of Art. Her research background is in immersive and playful design, especially how play can help us make sense of the complex systems we inhabit. She has created experiences and research in game simulation, extended reality, documentary and street games, designing interactive encounters designed to make large-scale systems legible, and to show that they are changeable. Her work has been published widely in academic journals, and she regularly collaborates with colleagues in the public and private sector on projects on design and education, with an eye on better futures. At the core of her work is a belief that art and design will help us save the world.
