Mary Ann Doane

Bio: Mary Ann Doane is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Articulation (phonetics). The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 274 citations.

Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation

Abstract: In Birth of an Industry , Nicholas Sammond describes how popular early American cartoon characters were derived from blackface minstrelsy. He charts the industrialization of animation in the early twentieth century, its representation in the cartoons themselves, and how important blackface minstrels were to that performance, standing in for the frustrations of animation workers. Cherished cartoon characters, such as Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat, were conceived and developed using blackface minstrelsy's visual and performative conventions: these characters are not like minstrels; they are minstrels. They play out the social, cultural, political, and racial anxieties and desires that link race to the laboring body, just as live minstrel show performers did. Carefully examining how early animation helped to naturalize virulent racial formations, Sammond explores how cartoons used laughter and sentimentality to make those stereotypes seem not only less cruel, but actually pleasurable. Although the visible links between cartoon characters and the minstrel stage faded long ago, Sammond shows how important those links are to thinking about animation then and now, and about how cartoons continue to help to illuminate the central place of race in American cultural and social life.

Perceiving Stability in a Changing World: Combining Shots and Intergrating Views in Motion Pictures and the Real World

Abstract: One of the central debates in the study of media concerns the relationship between our perception of real-world events and mediated events such as motion pictures. A number of authors have argued convincingly that both rely on similar natural perceptual processes. Here we extend this argument by reviewing research on scene perception showing that the similarity between film and natural perception includes a common tendency to perceive events as continuous in the face of large view-to-view inconsistencies. This research shows that observers are frequently unable to detect large unexpected changes that occur between views, even in objects within their focus of attention. This is true both in mediated stimuli such as motion pictures and during staged real-world interactions. Thus, perception of continuity may be an inference that proceeds in spite of impossible between-view changes, both in motion pictures and real-world scenes.

Marvellous noise and modest recording instruments : Dada, Surrealism, and early sound cinema

Abstract: p. 3 Declaration p. 4 Copyright Statement p. 5 Acknowledgements p. 6

Chapter 17 Sound maps: Music and sound in cybercartography

Abstract: As cartographic objects and processes are increasingly understood as multimodal in character, sound needs to be conceived as an integral element of any cartographic project. Arguing against simple notions of the sonification of data at the level of form, this essay suggests that a more thoroughgoing strategy of “sound design” needs to be pursued. Properly understood, sound design requires that voices, sounds and music, as well as silence, spatial location, signal processing, and interactivity be considered as part of the overall design process and related to other cartographic elements at the level of structure and theme. Furthermore, sounds need to be considered as not simply formal elements but as cultural objects, replete with meanings and associations. Drawing on the literature of sound in cinema and new media, the chapter builds on previous theories of image-sound relations and explores possibilities for new ways of integrating and manipulating sound within an interactive, multimedia context.