Multimedia software as culture: towards critical interaction design

The Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2004) was held in Helsinki, Finland, and Tallinn, Estonia, in August 2004. In this article, the author invites us to question our assumptions about multimedia interaction design, highlighting four important aspects of the future of multimedia: the relationship between location and media, networked interaction, wearable crafts, and diversity. While all of these aspects encompass software as culture and have become active areas of research and in creating software as art, we are still left to ponder the implications and impact that new interaction design practices have on the future of multimedia.