ABSTRACT
Human communication is overwhelmingly multimodal, but in relation to narratives I propose a rough three-way distinction, of “monomodal” narratives, old-tech multimodal narratives, and contemporary digitaltechnology multimodal narratives (typically enabled by digitization and computer-dependent). My focus here is on the last of these, and on whether the potential openness and interactivity of some narratives of the latter kind, such that no two consumers will necessarily view the same texts and images, let alone view them in the same sequence, disqualifi es them from consideration as narrative art. This depends on how one defi nes or conceives of narrative art. My conception of it is that as a convention-bound ideal the object of narrative art needs to appear permanent and stable, with a determinately sequenced experienced content, under notionally full authorial control; such constraining delimitations are the basis of artistic form. This defi nition clearly privileges similarity over difference (it wants all those encountering a particular art object at different times and in different places to meet essentially “the same object”). The privileging is not arbitrary, but rooted in the hope that radically different recipients of the stable narrative object might converge in a shared experience by means of a common focus on a common object; or at least the makings or the illusion of such commonalities. For this, an authorized and stable object, free from reader (or author) alteration-or one that gives every impression of being thus stable and complete-seems a precondition. This leads me to suggest a connection with an important contrast between some older monomodal art narratives (such as the oral tale, the ballad, and the short story), and most multimodal ones, including computer-mediated, namely the potential performance, in the individual’s own body (using voice and touch) of the former, and the impossibility of so performing the latter. This feature of quotable possession, applicable to some monomodal narratives and entirely inapplicable to highly technologized narratives, seems to be an entirely independent issue; but I am not sure that it is.
