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
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New Online Resource on the Berlin Kunstkammer
A Window on Nature and Art: The Virtual Research Environment of the Berlin Kunstkammer (Das Fenster zur Natur und Kunst: Forschungsumgebung zur Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Kunstkammer) is a “research environment” that provides digital access to the most important inventories, catalogs, and descriptions of this collection, including objects that have been reconstructed from a selection of sources. The… Read more
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DH Monday: Journal of Art Historiography No. 27 Supplement, December 22: Digital Humanities
The recently published Journal of Art Historiography Number 27 Supplement, December 22 is devoted to Digital Humanities documents guest edited by Andrew Hopkins (Università degli studi dell’Aquila). Alternate issues of this bi-annual publication are guest-edited by scholars specializing in a ‘subfield’ or particularly under-studied area of art history. Click here for a list of documents… Read more
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DH Monday: 2023 Library of Congress Innovator in Residence Rebuilds and Revisits Lost Communities
The Library of Congress has appointed Rhode Island artist, educator and community-focused researcher Jeffrey Yoo Warren as 2023 Innovator in Residence. With his project, Seeing Lost Enclaves: Relational Reconstructions of Erased Historic Neighborhoods of Color, Yoo Warren will use photographs, maps, film and audio recordings from Library collections to build an immersive digital 3D model… Read more
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DH Monday: “The Art Historical Image in the Digital Age” Seminar (Florence / 26 June – 7 July 2023)
“The Art Historical Image in the Digital Age” is a two-week seminar that will take place at the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut from 26 June – 7 July 2023. The seminar will familiarize participants with key concepts related to photography and imaging in art historical research, image data and its integral role in the… Read more
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DH Monday: Conference – The Digital Turn in Early Modern Japanese Studies (online / December 2-4, 2022)
The Digital Humanities occupy an ever-growing place in the research landscape of the twenty-first century. The past few years have seen rapid advancements in the development of digital technologies in the field of Japanese Studies. Scholars working on early modern Japan—be it literature, history, textual scholarship, art, or other areas of study—can avail themselves of several… Read more
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DH Monday: Workshop – “Progress and Innovative Practices in the Digital Humanities in Singapore and Abroad” (online / November 24-25)
Stefan Huebner invites you to the digital humanities workshop titled “Progress and Innovative Practices in the Digital Humanities in Singapore and Abroad” that he is hosting at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, on November 24-25, 2022. The event takes place on Zoom. Applicable across a wide variety of topics reaching from natural… Read more