The Red Dot takes its name from the small sticker that once marked slides in a physical archive, flagging them as worth a second look. We’re keeping that spirit alive here.
At MIRL, we engage with art history, digital humanities, and material culture through hands-on research and archival projects. Guided by our core principles—critical engagement with visual and material culture, ethical stewardship of images and data, and innovative approaches to research and pedagogy—we work at the intersection of technology and the humanities. We are especially interested in how digital tools can expand the study of images, objects, and spaces.
The Red Dot © 2025 is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
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Delacroix painting vandalized
Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830) has been defaced by a 28-year-old woman who wrote “AE911” across a roughly foot-long section along the bottom. The painting has been in the Louvre-Lens since the satellite museum opened December. The tag refers to the 9/11 conspiracy website Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. via Reuters Read more
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NMC Horizon Report on higher ed and technology
The NMC Horizon Report > 2013 Higher Education Edition “describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, a decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education.” The report is available here, as well as the working “short list” from… Read more
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US Holocaust Museum’s digital collection
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s digital collection — so far, that’s 217,630 records — is available to search online. There are some useful searching tips on the online collection homepage or try browsing within the three set “facets”: record type (e.g., oral history, photograph, document), language, or special collection. Other special features include links… Read more
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New online resource for Gothic architecture
The team at the Media Center for Art History at Columbia University have, over the past five years, put together a wonderful catalogue of photos, drawings, and plans of French Gothic architecture. The site, Mapping Gothic France, lets the end user explore the content through the dimensions of Space, Time and Narrative. The site also… Read more
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3D printing to produce … a house?
Red Dot does not pretend to understand how 3D printers work, although we’re trying hard. It’s just all so sci-fi. Using this additive process, designers have figured out ways to apply the technology to clothing and jewelry design, industrial design, medical and dental devices, and much more. You can see many applications, from simple to… Read more
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Thinglink – a new way to make images interactive
Thinglink is a new tool that lets you add multiple interactive elements to an image or page. It could be very useful, for example, in linking websites, photos or events to a map (click the map below for an example). It is used a lot in filmmaking and advertising, but has potential in educational… Read more