Named after the small red sticker that once guided scholars through legacy 35mm slides, The Red Dot is here to help you navigate the ever-evolving landscape of visual and material research. While rooted in the University of California, Santa Barbara community, our posts are open to all.
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.
Here, we’ll share insights on Digital Art History and Architectural History, highlight new image and data resources, discuss copyright and ethical considerations, and spotlight events that shape our field.
The Red Dot © 2025 is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
-
Gothic Past: A visual archive of medieval Ireland
Gothic Past is an open-access resource of over 3000 images for the study of medieval Irish architecture and sculpture. You can search the site or browse by tag, collection or online exhibition. It is part of a research project in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, Trinity College Dublin. Read more
-
MOCA announces tribute to Mike Kelley
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles will open an exhibition to celebrate the work and legacy of Mike Kelley, who died this month. The exhibition will showcase Kelley’s work in the museum’s permanent collection along with other artists’ works donated by Kelley. The show, A Tribute to Mike Kelley, opens this Saturday at MOCA… Read more
-
Tate Guide to Modern Art Terms app available
The Tate Gallery in Britain has an app for their Guide to Modern Art Terms. The app, designed for both iPhone and iPad, contains over 300 art terms defining and describing art movements, styles, schools, techniques and theory. Search by keyword or browse by different categories or through the image gallery. This is the first… Read more
-
Mike Kelley (1954-2012)
Contemporary artist Mike Kelley was found dead in his South Pasadena home on Wednesday. Obituaries via CalArts (where he received his MFA) and LA Times (with slideshow). Read more
-
Friday Fun: The Stereogranimator
The New York Public Library has developed one way to digitally view stereographs: The Stereogranimator. Users can choose one of the over 40,000 stereographs from the Library’s collection, create either an anaglyph or animated GIF by combining the two images into “one,” and share it in the Gallery. However, as a colleague put it: when… Read more
-
Eastman Kodak files for bankruptcy
The streamrolling trend from analogue to digital photography has finally forced Eastman Kodak to file for bankruptcy protection. They have only turned a profit one year out of the last seven, and are now borrowing cash and scrambling to sell digital imaging patents to keep afloat. Eastman Kodak was founded in 1880 – the camera… Read more