Sentenced to Transportation: An iDoc for Australia’s Convict Past

An interactive web documentary (iDoc) was produced to highlight multinational perspectives and give users the option to choose their own experience by exploring different narrative paths about convict transportation to the 11 UNESCO World Heritage Australian Convict Sites. The iDoc prototype provides a map-based main menu, an alternative “stories" footer menu, and a traditional linear progression. It brings 11 physical locations into the digital landscape and provides a series of “stories” from the perspectives of female convicts, Irish convicts (and their famous escape stories, convicts’ life in prison), and the impact of colonialism on the Indigenous populations. The iDoc also addresses the issue of growing public rejection of experts’ presentation of history through a bottom-up approach of remixing user-generated (i.e., non-expert) content with curated archives and tourism marketing content. The public can interact with the work through a web browser (preferably Chrome) with an internet connection by clicking on the hyperlinks in the interface.