MIRL (MATERIAL / IMAGE RESEARCH LAB)

The Red Dot

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 

  • Public domain newsreels and films online

    Two wonderful sources for public domain film footage are available online Universal Newsreels: created between 1929 and 1967, these newsreels cover the major topics of the day.  They were put into the public domain by University City Studios.   (There are also many more recent pieces of news footage in this college.) Prelinger Archives:   a… Read more

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  • UCSB Grad symposium – Call for Papers

    The graduate students in the department of the History of Art and Architecture at UCSB are holding their 36th Annual Symposium on April 29-30, 2011, devoted to the theme “Moralities in the Visual Arts.”  They invite proposals for papers on any aspect of this theme from graduate students and recent PhDs in all areas of… Read more

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  • Latest ARTstor additions and announcements

    ARTstor’s latest additions to their Digital Library include: Judy Chicago: 367 works by the artist, author, feminist, and educator (keyword: judychicago) George Eastman House: the completion of 19,161 images illustrating the history of photography (keyword: eastmanhouse) And these institutions have agreed to contribute: Museum of the City of New York: over 55,000 images from prints,… Read more

  • Even more Santa Barbara and UCSB images available

    We have recently added many more Santa Barbara and UCSB images and records to our online image database (MDID), making the total over 600, and with more on the way.   The most recent content we’ve added includes archival images of the UCSB campus and building (including the aerial view at left ca. 1941, long before… Read more

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  • Fisk University and the Stieglitz Collection: The ruling

    The verdict is in: The Tennessean reports that a Nashville chancery court ruled in favor of Fisk University’s selling a half share of their Stieglitz Collection to Crystal Bridges, an Arkansas museum, to raise operational funds. There is a catch, however: the court ordered the university to set aside 2/3 of the sale—$20 million—in a… Read more

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  • Free Muybridgizer app from Tate and iTunes

    Tate Britain, partnered with iTunes, is offering a free app that allows the user to create images inspired by Eadweard Muybridge. The app, which was launched in conjunction with the Tate exhibition Muybridge at Tate Britain (8 September 2010–16 January 2011), “Muybridge-izes” photos by placing a succession of images into grids and sepia tones. [Note:… Read more

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