Interactive Narratives

These are stories about a patch of land in Sydney, an infamous acre known as the Block, a place steeped in a rich history of Aboriginal culture, activism and hope. Over time, tragedy, drug abuse and crime crept into the Indigenous-owned housing precinct. In September 2010, the few remaining tenants received notice to vacate their homes. The Aboriginal Housing Company, which owned the crumbling terraces, was keen to redevelop the land. Now vacant, the Block sits on the verge of a new, uncertain rebirth. This virtual time capsule invites you to explore the Block, to witness the events that defined its 40-year history, and to meet the people whose lives it has shaped. More…

Chinese-Australian students have come under increasing scrutiny, raising debate about the role of culture, coaching colleges and notions of childhood in an increasingly competitive school environment. Are Chinese parents too pushy, their focus too narrow and the children too obedient? Or are there lessons to be learnt from Chinese students to ensure everyone shares in the success? More…

This interactive documentary tells the stories of African immigrants and refugees living in Australia and their struggles and successes in shaping - and being shaped by - Australian society. It is both multi-platform and multi-lingual as the entire site has been translated and subtitled into six of the highest needs languages spoken in the African-Australian community. Each story is also being broadcast nationally across 68 language programs on SBS Radio. More…

Women from three generations talk about the price they pay when a country marches off to war, in intimate portraits using video, audio and still photography. Curiosity factor: all video and photos shot on the Canon 5D Mark II. More…

The bizarre and tragic deaths of Margaret Chandler and Gib Bogle on the banks of the Lane Cove River in Sydney, 1963, remain an elusive and intriguing Australian mystery. This website explores the theme of inconsistent and impermanent memory, allowing you to shift forward and backward through time, space and point-of-view, and so compare eyewitness accounts of the deaths. The story is represented by a montage of sound, image and text, and is controlled via a map/graph interface. As you progress through it, the project becomes less about solving the crime and more about revealing the enigma of individual experience and interpretation. It is also about how a time and place, in this case Cold War Sydney, inescapably shapes the perceptions of the people who live within it, and how people who suffer an unexplainable tragedy are often blamed for it. It is the story of an improbable murder or an implausible accident; a puzzle without a solution where objective truth becomes impossible to grasp because it does not exist. More…

This ninth edition from the award winning series of interactive broadband documentaries examines the emerging and volatile epidemic of crystal metamphetamine in Austyralia. It uses Macromedia's Flash to encapsulate video and interactive content so that the original televised docuementary can be viewed on demand, contextualised with extended interviews and interactive features. Audience members can, when prompted, depart the main narrative to listen and explore the extended interviews and interactives before being returned exactly to their point of departure in the main storyline. More…

It is only during an underworld war that the public catches a glimpse of the criminal networks that prosper in Melbourne. The murders of the last six years provide an insight into a world where men without jobs or consciences can thrive in the city's underworld...at least in the short term. More…