Multimedia Software as Culture: Towards Critical Interaction Design

development are increasingly driven by social, artistic, and local cultural concepts and needs. Instead of discussing generic tools and models, we can analyze the relationship between multimedia content, location, and culture, as well as how we interact with multimedia under the auspices of critical interaction design. The implications go beyond creative development (software as art and software for art): understanding the relationship between new technologies and actual lived experiences can result in new perspectives on software as a cultural artifact, which challenges our conceptions about how multimedia is developed and used across applications. Within this context I will discuss topics related to the central themes of ISEA 2004: software as culture and critical interaction design.