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Paper preented
at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit4/subs/mit4_abstracts.html

"The Sudwestern Saga: Live Media and Modular Narratives
Between Commedia dell’Arte and Digital Hypertexts"
BY
Marina Turco,
University of Utrecht, Art-U (marina@art-u.it)

Introduction: the problem with ‘live media’

The practice of ‘live media’ has become increasingly important in the last decade. After
experimenting with the various aesthetic and conceptual aspects of interactive devices, computer
and web technologies, artists realised that the use of digital media in a ‘theatrical situation1’ could
attract a larger public and generate interesting new cultural genres.
Live media include all kinds of ‘mediatized’ traditional forms of performance (theatre, concerts,
live shows where digital technologies play a fundamental role) and all kinds of ‘performatized’
media practices (film, web streaming, TV in a performative situation). Live media, thus,
generated new cultural forms (VJ-ing, multimedia performances, etc.), but also transformed or
hybridised traditional forms.
The complexity of the ‘mediatizing process’ and the high level of ‘hybridism’ in the generated
languages, contents and contexts have inspired a debate on how to define and describe those
new forms of theatre.
In order to elaborate a specific vocabulary and theoretical tools for live media within new media
studies, it is necessary to distinguish between ‘technology’, ‘medium’, ‘cultural function’ and
‘social field’, four concepts that introduce four different ‘points of view’ on live media and on all
cultural forms in general.
My case study will focus on a group of live media performances called ‘The Sudwestern Saga’,
by the Portuguese artist Edgar Pêra, that does not fit completely within traditional performance
genres nor in new media genres (like VJ-ing and electronic audio-visual performances). The
performance (defined by the artist as ‘cine-concert’) makes use of several media and languages
(cinema, theatre, digital video, music), but it is the ‘theaterical hypermedium’ that determines
the general narrative structure and the function of new media inside it.
For this reason, I chose as a useful term of comparison an ‘old theatre genre’, the commedia
dell’arte, a genre which shares with Pêra’s work the ‘modularity’ of storytelling and a certain
kind of ‘popular aesthetics’. From this comparison it emerges that ‘mediatized theatre’
functions as ideal feeding ground for new forms of ‘modular’ narratives.
It is beyond the scope of this article to account for the complex debate on new media, liveness
and narrativity. Nevertheless, I will try to underline the importance of theatre as hypermedium, as
a ‘place’ where ‘intermediality’(the ‘on stage’ relationship between different media) takes place
and influences our ways of telling stories and creating cultural identity.
1 I distinguish ‘theatrical performance’ from ‘performance’ in general. Theatre is a cultural form based on
four main elements: text, performer, audience, theatre space. Performance is ‘every action which produces
meaning’ in all kinds of cultural forms (reading a book or playing a game are performative actions). In this
article I use the word performance and theatre as synonymous with ‘theatrical performance’.


1 The Sudwestern Saga: movies, myths, music and mix
1.1 The Sudwestern Saga: the myth
The Sudwestern Saga is a series of performances directed by the Portuguese ‘cine-artist’ Edgar
Pêra. By means of live music and video, the artist develops stories inspired by the culture of fado
and by the Western film genre. Pêra combines these two ‘popular epics’, believing that fado
(traditional Portuguese music) shares with the Western stories a certain atmosphere, a certain
attitude towards life. “Cowboys, just like fado people, are solitary and always getting into fights”.
He sees “the southwest of Europe as a resistance point, a bit like Asterix, as a corner in Europe
where there are small instances where the popular culture survives. It is that confrontation with
today that interested me. All these popular historical references; to take them and to put them face
to face with contemporaneous acting, or at least, with a kind of burlesque acting and a kind of
mute fado. To turn the fado’s ‘sobs’ into laughs. Fado are emotions in its primitive stage. Not
only sadness but also another type of emotions…”2
The Saga represents a ‘parallel universe’, a place where authenticity and primitive feelings
survive. The ‘Sudwestern’ is Portugal, the last frontier where cowboys came in the XIX century
and lived the same kind of life as fado singers, joining the scum of society, telling stories of
misfortune (‘bad fado’ means ‘bad fate’, ‘bad karma’). Resistance (against modernisation without
culture?), travel as a philosophy of life and nostalgia for a lost authenticity3 are the leitmotivs of
their adventures.

1.2 The Western-fado filmzzz
The ‘story’ of the Sudwestern Saga was first developed in a video work called Guitarra com
gente lá dentro (2003), realized for the exhibition Movimentos perpetuos. On this occasion
“Portuguese artists were invited to kreate original pieces inspired in the work and life of Carlos
Paredes”, a famous fado musician. The ‘film’ starts in the theatre where Paredes, “legendary
Portuguese guitar hero, rehearses for a koncert with Madredeus”4. The legends of fado and the
spirit of the music immediately call up associations with another myth, that of the West,
‘embodied’ in the media through which it was shaped and spread all over the world: cinema and
comics (the artist proclaims to be a “lover of Musik & Freedom (and Komix!!)”).
Re-interpreting the language of the Western film genre, the early Western in particular, Pêra tells
the story of a group of cowboys who came to Portugal as ‘poor immigrants’ and struggled to
survive on the streets of Lisbon. The Portuguese capital is transformed into a Western movie set,
with its small streets and its saloons. Portugal is represented as a land of immigrants (as America
was in the Western), where the rules are made by guns and the emotions are primitive.
In the movie, the ‘true hero’ and other characters play short episodes, linked with each other in an
associative and intuitive way, assembled like ‘interchangeable modules’ (some titles: Europa
Southwest, Saloon Fadista, Unemployed & Hopeless, Delikate Lifes, Stage-koach Robbery,
Lynch au Espichel, Female Fado). The episodes describe scenes and happenings from the fado-
Western life, with cowboys attacking trains (in this case the Lisbon tramway!), robbing

-2 Interview with Edgar Pêra in the World Wide Video Festival 2004 catalogue on CD-rom.
-3 For the concept of ‘nostalgia’ in Western films, see Nanna Verhoeff, After the Beginning: Western Before
1915 (forthcoming, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, fall 2005).
4 Quotes from the video Guitarra come Gente lá dentro.



undefended women to make a living in difficult times, fighting in the saloon. The episodes are
scenes of love and jealousy, fights and rivalries. The Western-fado filmzzz is an assemblage of
‘loose gags’ and always ends with the death of one or all characters.
The movie is released in several ‘re-mixes’, with different ‘sequences of episodes’, depending on
the context within which it is presented as a movie.

1.3 The Sudwestern performancezzz
Each Sudwestern Saga performance develops a particular version of the story, using episodes
from different remixes and creating a new sequence that does not correspond to that of a
particular movie-remix. The musicians and the actors play always the same role (in the films and
in the performances), but not all of them are necessarily present on stage. There are editions with
only two performers, like the one at the Video Village festival in Milan, and versions where the
complete troupe participates, like that at the World Wide Video Festival in Amsterdam.
The musicians are the group DEAD COMBO: Antonio Antunes (Tó Trips), Carla Bolito (Zevera,
The Woman From Nevada), Miguel Borges (Mik the Kid), Johnny Gomez (The True Hero). The
‘guest cine-stars’ are: Marina Albuquerque (A Víuva da Atalaia), Lavínia Moreira (Kacilda),
António Alcântara (Kid Beans), João Dias (Pasolinero Del Diablo) Teresa Meireles (Wretched
Girl).
While the actors and the musicians are ‘playing’ (the story is not ‘spoken’, the episodes are acted
by means of pantomime and songs), Edgar Pêra mixes images from different sources: real time
images of the performers and public; images shot one or two days before in the city where the
show is presented; episodes from the fado-Western movie; archive images (tapes related to the
fado-Western theme, images from other cities where the group travelled5).
This kind of improvisation could be compared to that of a jazz band. “There is a map of
sequences for the actors and the VJ. A road with one direction and multiple ways of getting
there”6. Most of the times the music leads, but other times a particular episode/action starts on the
screen and passes to the stage, or vice-versa, from the stage to the screen. As in a jazz band, the
instruments play together, alternating the leads and the solos without following rigid rules.
The ‘mute cinema of fado’ comes to life again every time it is played live and is influenced by the
context where the performance is staged7.
Like the Carnival, the Saga crosses the borders between real life and theatre. The myth lives also
‘off-stage’, when the actors wear their ‘masks’ (a hat, a jacket, a guitar) and ‘perform’ on the
streets of the places they visit. “The Sudwestern Saga is shot in almost every place I go – says
Pêra – also when it is not performed in a theatre. I only need a hat. The AmeriKan Kowboy is All
Over The World”8.
The tension between ‘kaos and kontrol’, coincidence and fate generates the endless and cyclical
movement of life. This cyclical movement through time and space is ‘represented’ and
‘empowered’ by art. “Everybody dies on stage. They stab themselves whilst singing. The end is
always a celebration of Acting and surviving Death through ‘Art-Actions’”9.
5 Lisbon, Amsterdam, Beijing and Milan.
6 Interview with Edgar Pêra, 1 April 2005.
7 http://www.art-u.it/Perform.htm
8 Interview with Edgar Pêra, 1 April 2005.
9 Interview with Edgar Pêra, 1 April 2005.
.....
2 Names are the (broken) mirror of things
Every time a new cultural form is created, it takes some time to define it and give it a place in the
history of culture. This history is made up of ‘traditions’ and ‘genres’ based on a particular
technology, cultural function or social context. In the last two centuries new technologies played
an important role in the birth of new ‘media’ like cinema, television, the Internet, etc. But the
‘technological’ aspect is not always the only or the most important element in shaping the identity
of a cultural form. Some cultural forms and functions, such as narratives, music, virtual spaces,
etc., are ‘cross-medial’. ‘Genres’ like the comedy, the ‘detective fiction’, the romance, even if
born within a particular medium (in literature, theatre, film), are ‘transmedial’.
In order to describe the relationship between medium and narrative, it is necessary to define
the different elements which play a role in this relationship: the technology, the medium’s
identity, the cultural function and the social field.
‘Technology’ indicates a group of techniques and devices having in common certain functions or
features (digital technology, for instance, includes all devices that can read, write, or store
information that is represented in numerical form).
‘Medium’ as ‘means’ for transmitting cultural content is based on a technology, but its identity is
influenced by the dispositif10, or ‘apparatus’, that is the mode of address, the positioning of the
spectator/reader (for instance the ‘screening situation’ in cinema), the cultural function and the
social field(s) within which it operates.
In Pierre Bourdieu’s model of analysis of social phenomena, the ‘field’ is a structured social
space with its own laws of functioning and its own relations of force. It has its internal dynamics,
but it is also related to other social fields. Inside the field of cultural production agents compete
for symbolic power, and the conflict between the orthodoxy and the challenge of new modes of
cultural practice manifests itself as ‘position-takings’, which may refer to both internal (e.g.
stylistic) and external (e.g. political) positioning. At the social level, the systems of production
and distribution, the critical discourses and the artistic products relate to each other following
dynamics which are internal to the field. These dynamics, though, can be influenced or modified
by other fields like the field of economy, of power, etc.
11
‘Cultural functions’ are narratives, information, game, education, entertainment, etc.
The identity of a cultural form, thus, and the way we name it, results from the positioning and the
relationships between the four elements mentioned above.
Film, for instance, is a cultural form named by a technology, but the ‘genres’ within it can be
defined by the cultural function (‘comedy’ refers to a certain kind of narrative, thus to a cultural
function), by the dispositif (‘experimental cinema’ presents ways of addressing the audience
different from those of classic cinema), by the social field (‘independent film’ refers to film
produced by ‘independent’ production companies). All those ‘vantage points’ together constitute
the identity of film as a medium.
The Sudwestern Saga is described as ‘cine-concert’. ‘Cine’ indicates the predominant role of the
film medium in the choice of the visual language and of the ‘screening dispositif’, ‘concert’
indicates the presence of musicians on stage, thus the theatre as medium. The title ‘Sudwestern
Saga’, though, refers not to a medium, but to the popular narratives of the Western and to the fact
that these narratives are organised as a ‘Saga’, that is an ‘open story’, developing in ‘real time’
and dealing with the myths and legends of a certain community.
10 For the concept of dispositif see Frank Kessler, Notes on ‘dispositif’, work in progress, version presented
at the Utrecht Media Research Seminar in August 2004, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands.
11 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1993).


The reference to open and popular narratives in the name of Pêra’s work triggered the comparison
with an older form of popular performance, the commedia dell’arte.
2.1 Naming cultural forms by the medium, the cultural function and the social
field
The commedia dell’arte is a theatre genre born in Italy in the mid-16th century. It was called by
different names, each of them pointing to different aspects of this genre which could describe it
and distinguish it from other forms of theatre and ‘entertainment’.
In the first decades the commedia dell’arte was “known as ‘improvised comedy’ (commedia
improvvisa), ‘comedy by subject’ (a soggetto) or ‘off the cuff’ (a braccia) from the technique of
the comedians who improvised their sallies on the basis of a scenario or canovaccio…”12 These
terms emphasize acting and performance rather than the literary text. The narrative structure
(cultural function and dispositif) and the performing techniques were the most important features
in this new genre. Nevertheless, the term ‘commedia’, I would argue, indicates the influence of
the classic comedy, and thus the profane and literary character (rooted in Renaissance culture) of
the new genre as opposed to the two main forms of theatre in the Middle Ages: the sacre
rappresentazioni (religious theatre) and court entertainment (the buffoni, stand-up performers).
“The term ‘commedia dell’arte’ can be traced to the eighteenth century… In the medieval and
Renaissance period, an ‘arte’ was an economic and political corporation organized by one of
various crafts of profession”13. This term denotes that the actors were organized into professional
companies to perform not merely on religious and political festival occasions, but all year round
for their principal livelihood. The genre is thus named by the social field within which it operates.
The bourgeois culture and context were indeed very important in shaping the identity of the
commedia dell’arte. In the 16th century theatre became a secular form of entertainment again, for
a bourgeois public, dealing with bourgeois issues, with its own professional status and place (the
building called ‘theatre’) and its own ‘commercial’ production system.
Modern forms of ‘mediatized performance’ have undergone a similar process of shaping
identity through the debate on names and definitions. It was easier to find an appropriate
definition when new media were totally integrated in older forms and aesthetics. It became much
more problematic when the new cultural forms involved new or hybrid production contexts,
contents, displaying and viewing patterns.
Multimedia performances described as ‘VJ-ing’, for instance, are directly inspired by DJ sets for
the techniques used, the aesthetic qualities and the context of presentation. ‘Video settings’ in
theatre plays and in rock-pop concerts do not have a ‘separate identity’ and name, since they do
not change radically the technology, the dispositif or the social field of the ‘hosting forms’, but
just ‘add’ cinematographic or ‘mediatic’ features to those old media.
When the aspect of technological experimentation is predominant, both on a technical and on a
theoretical level, the performance is included in the field of new media arts and labelled as ‘live
media’. Live media forms, like electronic music concerts with video, multimedia or interactive
performance in the tradition of performance art, etc., can be presented in traditional contexts
(theatre, concerts, clubs), but they also developed their own circuit in media arts and electronic
music festivals, that is, in the field of new media arts14.
12 Giacomo Oreglia, The Commedia dell’Arte (London: Methuen & Co LTD, 1968), 1.
13 Robert Henke, Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell’Arte (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 5.
14 Some examples are the Sonar festival in Spain, the Toonfestival and the Sonic Acts festivals in The
Netherlands, new media art festivals like Ars Electronica, Transmediale, Deaf festival, etc.

6
Some media art makers and critics call some of these forms ‘live cinema’. This definition refers
not to the traditional ‘cinema effect’ (realistic moving images telling a linear story, shown in a
‘passive’ viewing situation) described by Metz15, but to a different ‘cinematic dispositif’ of
screening and spectatorship patterns (suggested by the word ‘live’). The term ‘cinema’ is used
here in a very broad sense, as a synonym of ‘moving image’, referring to experimental forms of
screening, visual language and contents16. This definition stresses the similarities with film
practices, especially the presence of big screen projections, but neglects the contribution of video
and TV to the elaboration of various dispositifs, visual languages and narrative structures.
Both ‘live media’ and ‘live cinema’ are broad definitions which do account for the ‘theatrical
dispositif’ and the presence of ‘media’ within it (the term media refers mostly to electronic and
digital media) but do not indicate the cultural function and the context of presentation.
Actually, these terms are used in the field of new media art (the complete name should be ‘live
media arts’) and indicate works dealing with the aesthetic aspects of digital media17.
Edgar Pêra’s work can be included in the broad category of live media. The particular structure of
the Saga, though, where different media (cinema, theatre, digital media) produce a particular kind
of narrative, can be better explained through the confrontation with the commedia dell’arte rather
than with other forms of live media.
3 Modular narratives
‘Narrative’ and ‘story’ are very complex concepts. Different definitions have been given, and the
issue of what is narrative and what is not is too broad to be discussed here. I will agree on a
narrow definition of narrative as a particular textual structure that is functional to my case study.
According to Wanda Rulewicz:
A text is a semantically coherent whole which may be presented as a surface structure
either in natural language (as was the case with the traditional notion), or in any of the
sign systems used by mankind… Narrative grammars are only part of text grammars,
narrative structures not being the necessary condition for the existence of a text...
Nevertheless, these grammars furnish an instrument to analyse the great part of our
literary and theatrical heritage which is based on the principle of narration, including
'characters' and their actions.18
A text, thus, is not necessarily narrative. According to Mieke Bal, a cultural object is narrative if
it contains an actor and a narrator, is organised in three levels, the text, the story and the fabula,
and if the ‘content’ is a “series of connected events caused or experienced by actors”19.
15 C. Metz, “Le film de fiction et son spectateur”, Communications 23, 1975.
16 According to the Dutch curator Hans Beekman, "live Cinema" stands for the simultaneous creation of
sound and image in real time by sonic and visual artists who collaborate to elaborate concepts on equal
terms (http://www.live-cinema.org).
17 In the press release of the Netmage festival, 4th edition (Bologna, 21-24 January, 2004), ‘live media’ are
described as “performance practices that use, and integrate, audio-visual devices (digital, electronic,
cinematographic, technological, pre technological etc.) to construct an active relationship with the
audience… the wide range of instruments and solutions that are used by artists, musicians, technicians and
crews from vastly differing starting points: going beyond, though obviously not excluding, the forms of
mixing sound and image that are covered by the term VJ-ing… We are aiming for innovation and
originality, for forms that reflect the pleasure of risk-taking, a taste for experimentation, originality.”
18 Wanda Rulewicz, “A Grammar of Narrativity: Algirdas Julien Greimas”, The Glasgow Review, Issue 3,
Summer 1995, http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/STELLA/COMET/glasgrev/issue3/rudz.htm
19 Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (Toronto: University if Toronto Press,
1985), 8.

7
3.1 The narrative structure of the commedia dell’arte
Obviously, the performances known as commedia dell’arte were narrative texts. The narrative
structure of this genre is of a particular kind.
The commedia dell’arte was played by organized professional companies that performed
improvised drama based on written plots (scenario, libretto, canovaccio):
The scenario or canovaccio (canvas) is a schematic description of the performance; it
gives a list of the characters and of the ‘props’ required, the division into acts and, by the
use of brief and stylized instructions, the entries and exits of the characters.
The plots… are developed by the use of the most varied devices: disguises,
identifications, misunderstandings, kidnappings, shipwrecks, spells and magic. The
central theme is always the loves of the young people, the jealousy and rivalries of the old
ones and the intrigues of the zanni…20
The plot described in the canovaccio was always a variant of the ‘universal and eternal’ story of a
hindered love between two young lovers. The central theme was the love between the young
people, opposed by the jealousy and rivalries of the elders, but helped by the intrigues of the
zanni (servants) and destined to a happy end. Often a generational conflict shaped the plot, with
the lover’s father (Pantalone or Dottore) providing the blocking agent either for financial motives
or because the father has erotic designs of his own.
The canovaccio complicated this ‘common basic plot’ with additional romance plots, sometimes
in contrast with the main one, misunderstandings, spells, disguises, plots within plot, etc.
There were thus three structural levels: that of an overall structure (the dominant romantic plot),
a sub-structural level (the variant of the story described in the canovaccio), and the level of
particular verbal, musical, or gestural enactments (actors improvised songs, gags, jokes, drawn
from repertoires called zibaldoni).
For developing the plot in its most basic form four main characters were necessary. The
characters were ‘types’ playing conflicts of elementary, ‘universal’ forces: the servant against his
master, the son against the father, the old against the young. Those conflicts triggered the
minimum ‘action’ necessary for generating a story. The four main ‘masks’ were the old man
(Pantalone, il Dottore), the cunning servant (Brighella, Pulcinella, Arlecchino) and the two lovers
(the Cavaliere, Isabella, etc.). Those basic characters could ‘multiply’ and be presented in many
variants in the same play (two or more servants, two or more couples of lovers involved in
interlacing affairs, etc.), but none of them had an ‘historical’ or psychological evolution, they
were masks without memory and without catharsis21.
The fixity of the ‘overall structure’ (the basic plot of a hindered love, which we could call ‘metanarrative’
or ‘matrix narrative’) and the characters contrasts with the variety of the canovacci,
and with the uniqueness of each performance. The same canovaccio was indeed interpreted
differently each time it was played (it functioned as a ‘second level matrix’, a matrix for the
single performance), since the actors improvised the dialogues using jokes, gags (lazzi) and
gestural enactments taken from the zibaldoni. The zibaldoni were written repertoires, a kind of
‘character’s data base’ containing all possible words and acts that could belong to a certain
character.
The general structure (the three levels together) can be described as ‘modular structure’ (and
‘modular narrative’), formed by a matrix narrative filled by modules describing situations and
20 Giacomo Oreglia, ib., p. 18.
21 Norbert Jonard, La commedia dell’arte (Lyon: L’Hermès, 1982), 72-73.

8
characters, which could be endlessly recombined22. The modularity operates at two levels: the
matrix of the overall structure (the romantic plot) was filled by modules-situations (disguises,
misunderstandings, kidnappings, etc.) and modules-characters (Pantalone, the Doctor, etc.)
forming the canovaccio, the second level matrix was filled by the modules-dialogues (jokes, and
gags retrieved by the actors from the data base – zibaldone).
As we will see, this structure has many similarities with contemporary new media performances
and with the so-called ‘aesthetics of the data base’.
The simple plot of the canovaccio is each time enriched by ‘interchangeable modules’ (gags,
scenes, characters, ‘inserts’ like music, poetry). The gags were not necessarily functional to the
development of the storyline. While in a ‘classical’ story each element contributes to the
development of the plot, in this kind of narrative the ‘digressions’ are as important as the main
story.
3.2 Modular narrative in the Sudwestern Saga
The Sudwestern Saga is built on a modular structure similar to that of the commedia dell’arte.
The meta-narrative is the ‘Western-fado saga’, where the heroes fight for love and survival and
die tragically at the end.
The different versions (remixes) of the video and the total corpus of ‘episodes’ are the canovaccio
(each remix edits a choice of the many episodes realised) and the zibaldone where the video artist
select the clips he mixes during the performance and the actors find the stories on which they
improvise.
The ‘play’ can be performed by two characters (at the Video Village festival, in Milan, there were
only two artists performing a ‘duel between camera and guitar’), by more than two or by the
complete troupe of ten elements.
3.3 Modular narrative forms throughout history
The cultural forms using modular narrative are numerous and various throughout history.
Modular narratives probably originated within oral cultures. When stories were transmitted
orally the storyteller needed a repertoire of phrases, images and episodes which could be easily
inserted at any point in the main storyline, to avoid embarrassing silences, to keep the attention
and interest of the public high and to adjust the length and tension of the storytelling to the
particular circumstances, audiences and context.
Even though the term ‘modular’ indicates a ‘technical’ aspect, my understanding of a modular
narrative form is also linked to a specific cultural function (collective and archetypical narratives)
and social field (popular culture).
The story told in a modular structure is often a ‘collective’ product, showing archetypical
characters, situations and values. The content is ‘ahistorical’ and the characters have no
psychological depth or development. At the same time, the story is more embedded in and
influenced by the ‘real life’ of the storyteller and the public (who can often participate in the
development of the story). The difference between ‘real life’ and ‘fiction’ is less clear-cut than
in ‘classic narrative’.
Finally, modular narratives are often ‘transmedial’ (they can evolve or be transmitted by
different media in different ‘viewing and participation settings’).
22 In the on line English dictionary Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com) “modular” means: 1-
Of, relating to, or based on a module or modulus. 2- Designed with standardized units or dimensions, as for
easy assembly and repair or flexible arrangement and use: modular furniture; modular homes.

9
Examples of modular narratives include oral sagas and epics, fairytales, TV genres like series, sitcoms,
reality TV, (video) games, ‘theatre genres’ like carnival, rituals, etc.
3.4 Performance and modular narrative
Modular narratives are ‘open’ forms which function better if the public is involved in the creation
of the story or ‘lives’ in the fictional space. For this reason, modular narratives have a privileged
relationship with ‘performative’ media in general and theatre in particular.
The practices of storytelling and theatre (in all its forms, including ritual) were the main means of
transmitting stories in pre-literate times, when visual arts as well were meaningful only as part of
a ritual or collective event. In performance both the ‘maker’ and the ‘public’ work to construct
the story in ‘real time’ (here and now).
Non-performative cultural forms that are structured as ‘series’ are also often ‘modular’: in a broad
sense, all literary, theatrical and cinematographic genres are modular narratives, because they
present variants of the same kind of story. In a more ‘restricted’ sense, only forms like sit-coms
and some TV shows are modular. These forms are not performative, but for the reasons
mentioned above (parallelism with the ‘real life’ of the viewer) they involve the spectator directly
in a different way than do ‘classic narratives’.
TV for example, is more ‘theatrical’ than ‘cinematic’, because of the ontology of liveness, the
‘continuous’ use of space (while cinema has access to an alogical or discontinuous use of space),
the ‘programming flow’ that follows the daily rhythm of the audience’s life23.
Modular narratives, just because they have a ‘participative’ character and are able to build a
sense of community, are often linked to performative or participative cultural forms, which seem
to be more developed in oral and digital cultures. The term ‘modular narrative’, indeed, is
common in new media studies, where it is sometimes used as synonymous with ‘hypertextual
narrative’.
4 New Media, modular narrative and performance
4.1 Digital media fostered the development of modular narratives
According to Lev Manovich, in the computer age narratives have been replaced by data bases as
the ‘dominating form’ of human culture. A data base is defined in computer science as a
“structured collection of data… organized for fast search and retrieval by a computer… Different
types of data base - hierarchical, network, relational and object-oriented – use different models to
organize data.” CD-ROMs and web sites are collections of data ordered in lists, where narrative is
just one method, among others, for accessing data. The fact that data are continuously added to a
web site, which is thus ‘open’ and never ‘complete’, contributes to the anti-narrative logic of
the web. “In new elements are being added over time, the result is a collection, not a story”.24
Manovich seems to set data base and narrative in opposition to each other.
But further on Manovich affirms that data base and narrative are complementary to each other,
which he explains through the concept of algorithm. In computer games, for instance, the ‘tasks’
set by the algorithms (‘if you shoot, you win’) “make[s] the player experience the game as
narrative. (…) While computer games do not follow database logic, they appear to be ruled by
23 Marina Turco, “Changing histories, changing practices. An instance of confrontation between video art
and television”, E-View, no. 2 (2004), http://comcom.uvt.nl/e-view/04-2/inhoud.htm, 7-10.
24 Lev Manovich, “Database as a Symbolic Form”, in http://www.manovich.net/

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another logic – that of an algorithm. They demand that a player executes an algorithm in order to
win.” Manovich compares algorithms with narrative: “in contrast to most games, most narratives
do not require algorithm-like behaviour from their readers. However, narratives and games are
similar in that the user, while proceeding through them, must uncover their underlying logic – its
algorithm. (…) CD-ROMs, web site and other media objects which are organized as data bases
correspond to the data structure; while narratives, including computer games, correspond to the
algorithms.”
The concept of algorithm, though, cannot be precisely identified with the concept of narrative.
‘Algorithm’ only indicates the ‘mechanical’ operation, executed mostly by a computer, of
retrieving data from a data base and assembling them in a sequence determined by predefined
parameters. The concept of narrative is more complex, and Manovich admits this when he adopts
Mieke Bal’s definition of narrative, which requires the presence of a text ‘representing’ connected
events, and makes this connection (and the presence of a meaning) depend on the activity of a
human author, reader, actor, etc.
In Manovich’s view, the importance of the data base in new media and the interaction with
algorithmic operations would create a new kind of narrative. “The ‘user’ of the narrative is
traversing a data base, following links between its records as established by the data-base creator.
An interactive narrative (which could also be called ‘hyper-narrative’ in an analogy with
hypertext) can then be understood as the sum of multiple trajectories through a data base. A
traditional linear narrative is one, among many other possible trajectories; i.e. a particular choice
made within a hypernarrative.”25
I agree with Manovich that data bases are important elements of modern narratives, because new
media allow the ‘elements out of which the story is constructed’ (stored in the data base) and the
interface to maintain their separate existence, even while they are working together,
connected by a matrix-structure (which determines which choices the author/reader can make).
If we want to describe this kind of narrative - a text formed by multiple data bases and by an
interface that leads the choice through the data base, structuring the sum of these choices as a
coherent sequence – independently from the medium used to produce and convey it, the terms
interactive and hypernarrative are not the best options. In my opinion, ‘modular narrative’ better
describes this process because it refers only to the organisation of the content (in a matrixmodules
structure), while the term ‘interactive’ refers to a certain action, function and position of
the reader/actor26.
In fact, the problem of how this kind of narrative influences the concepts of spectator, actor,
reader, author, is one of a different level. Modular narratives can ‘activate’ different kinds of
authorship and spectatorship, and they are not the product of digital media only.
The opposition between ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ narrative proposed by Manovich thus is not
precise enough. I prefer ‘modular narratives’ vs. ‘classic’ narrative’, where the story is not only
linear, but represents a ‘complete’ and independent weltanschauung proposed by an ‘author’
(separated from the ‘reader’). In ‘classic narratives’, even if the author and the reader refer to
meta-stories, models and ‘data bases’ to build up their stories, there is no ‘recognised’ matrix
saying how the story should be organised and which kind of data base should be used.
The term ‘hypernarrative’ could be considered a synonym of ‘modular narrative’, but it seems
to refer more specifically to computer interfaces, to narratives transmitted by a hypertext. As Jon
Dovey argues:
25 Manovich, ib.
26 For an overview on interactive narratives see Chris Hales, “New Paradigms <>New Movies: Interactive
Film and New Narrative Interfaces”, in New Screen Media: Cinema/Art/Narrative, Martin Rieser & Andrea
Zapp editors (London: British Film Institute, 2002), 105-119.

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Strictly speaking, ‘hypertext’ refers to works which are made up from discrete units of
material, each of which offer the user a number of choices as to which unit is next
encountered. That is to say: pieces of text which carry within them paths to other texts.
The work itself is made up from discrete bodies of representational content, linked
together in a web connection, which the user must navigate.27
Even if we extend the concept of hypernarrative to non-digital media, it still differs from
‘modular narrative’. Hypernarrative indicates more a networking, rhizomatic structure, where a
hypertext retrieves data and texts from potentially endless other data bases, while in a modular
structure the choice of the data bases and the kinds of data (modules which are homologous with
each other) are limited.
Mediatized theatre as ideal stage for contemporary modular narratives
Contemporary ‘mediatized performance’ with a narrative content often presents modular
structures for two main reasons: digital media allow elements from a data base to be easily and
quickly recombined ‘on the fly’ and secondly, in contemporary culture there is a need for
participation, social meaning and identity.
With regard to the first reason the data base – interface relationship, typical of digital media, also
allows the manipulation and recombination of elements of a data base very easily in a ‘live’
situation. In VJ-ing for example, video clips from a digital data base are combined ‘live’ by a
Video Jockey by means of a VJ software. ‘Mixing softwares’ and devices are used in all kinds of
performance with video or digital sound.
Edgar Pêra uses no VJ software in his performance, but by connecting analogue and digital video
sources to the digital mixer and projector he reduces all video elements to a digital code: the film
episodes are transformed into digital modules and reassembled during the performance by the
interface mixer-artist. The acting and singing of the actors mirror or induce the video sequences.
The second aspect is that of social identity and participation built through theatre. The structure of
modular narratives can be successfully combined with a kind of content which re-uses and reactualises
collective values and forms. Think about TV and the film ‘icons’ used by VJs to
involve the audience of young people that has grown up with such images and to build through
them an ‘age community’.
Theatre as hypermedium allows the artist to combine different media, strengthening the
‘effects’ of each of them in the ‘intermedial’ interaction28. In the case of live media, both the
medium theatre - where the performers and the public ‘create’ the story while sharing the same
space and time - and the digital media (sampled and real time video mixed by a digital mixer,
mixing softwares, etc.) intensify the aspects of participation and interaction.
In fact, modular narrative in a non-theatrical situation can also be participative and popular, like
some kinds of virtual communities and online role-playing games. Nevertheless, from an
anthropologic and psychological vantage point the physical presence of two or more participants
(author, spectator, actor, etc.) in the same space reinforces the feeling of participation and
community. Theatre enhances the anthropologic aspect of modular narratives as collective and
archetypical narratives (cultural function) and as popular culture (social field).
The Sudwestern Saga draws on the ‘colonisation myths’ of Western societies (the Western film
genre) and combines them with the local tradition of Fado. This combination of elements from
27 Jon Dovey, “Notes Toward a Hypertextual Theory of Narrative”, in New Screen Media:
Cinema/Art/Narrative, Martin Rieser & Andrea Zapp editors (London: British Film Institute, 2002), 135.
28 For the concept of theatre as hypermedium see Chiel Kattenbelt, “Theatre as the Art of The Performer
and the Stage of Intermediality”, in Intermediality in Theatre and Peformance (forthcoming, Amsterdam
and New York: Rodopi, 2005).

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different traditions ‘translated’ into popular culture is very strong in the commedia dell’arte and
in most forms of popular live entertainment as well.
To summarize the results of the comparison between The Sudwestern Saga and the commedia
dell’arte, we can say that the saga has in common with the old genre the use of the theatrical
dispositif (theatre as hypermedium), the integration of different media (theatre as acting, music,
stage design, etc.), the cultural function (modular, archetypical narratives), and, with all the
differences due to the distant historical situation, the field of cultural production (popular and
profane theatre).
Conclusion
The question of what kind of narrative emerges from a new media environment is not a simple
one. As Manovich notes, even if “the modernist notion of medium specificity (‘every medium
should develop its own unique language’) is obsolete, we do expect computer narratives to
showcase new aesthetic possibilities.” We expect digital technologies to identify with a certain
kind of hypernarrative, ‘data base’ or ‘video games narratives’.
Nevertheless, even admitting that there is a prevalence of a certain narrative structure in ‘digital
culture’, my case study and the huge corpus of comparative media studies indicate that this
structure does not account for all cultural forms created by digital media and that some of the
characteristics of new media narratives were already present in older media.
Live media sometimes make use of the ‘digital’ data base – interface relationship, but the kind of
narrative that results from this operation is determined by different factors: the theatrical
hypermedium, the social field, the cultural function and the several aspects of the media involved
in the performance.
In this perspective, the Sudwestern Saga can be defined as ‘live media’, but also as ‘participative’
narrative, ‘modular’ narrative, ‘popular theatre’, ‘cine-concert’, etc. Pêra’s work certainly belongs
to the field of ‘live media art’, because it is produced and presented in the art context and because
it fosters the experimental use of digital media within a performative situation.
Nevertheless, the assonance between the Saga and the commedia dell’arte underlines the
importance of the theatrical tradition (as narratives and techniques) and of theatre as
hypermedium in the definition of this mediatized cultural form. Theatre incorporates cinema and
video and adapts these media to serve a narrative structure and participative patterns that are
theatrical and televisual rather than cinematographic.
We can say thus that in the case of the Sudwestern Saga the convergence of theatre and digital
media generated a cultural form which is at the same time modular, performative, and
participative.