Inside Tracks
An interactive book offers extra insight into Robyn Davison's epic journey across the Australian outback
National Geographic made Robyn Davison’s 17,000 mile journey across the Australian outback a 32-page cover story in 1978. The article attracted so much attention that Davison decided to write a book about the experience. Her account of the journey, entitled Tracks, won multiple literary awards and has since served as inspiration for a generation of adventurers.
Former Time, Life and National Geographic photographer Rick Smolan made numerous trips into the outback to find and photograph Davison on her journey and eventually published his pictures in From Alice to Ocean. It included the first interactive story-and-photo CDs made fro the general public.
Smolan is now releasing Inside Tracks, a photography book that lets readers find out more about each image by pointing their smartphone at it and receiving extra video footage. While viewing the images and reading Davidson's quotes about her trip, readers can also get a better idea of how the moments in each image were incorporated into the movie adaptation, also called Tracks, using HP's Aurasma app.
Fears about the death of the book are surely hyperbole but it’s interesting to see more and more contemporary twists on the age-old format. Commissioned by Land Rover, The Vanishing Game is an interactive version of Boyd's novella of the same name.
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