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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DH Monday: CFP – SJS, Special Issue: Big Visual Data as a New Form of Knowledge
Swiss Journal of Sociology (SJS) Special Issue: Big Visual Data as a New Form of Knowledge. Theoretical Approaches, Methodological Procedures and Empirical Analyses, with guest editor Sebastian W. Hoggenmüller. Proposal Submission Deadline: November 15, 2022. The proliferation of smartphones, image-based instant messaging services (e.g., Snapchat) and photo- or video-sharing platforms (e.g., YouTube, TikTok, Imgur, Instagram)… Read more
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OpenBibArt: A Century of Art Bibliography Now Online
OpenBibArt is a bibliographic database born out of a collaboration between the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA), the Getty Research Institute (GRI) and the Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique of the CNRS (Inist-CNRS). It unifies the contents of four related datasets, whose history is described below, into a single open search platform developed… Read more
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DH Monday: Open Call for Doctoral Students and Emerging Scholars to Present on New and Reconsidered Methods
Deadline to submit: October 24, 2022, at 11:59 PM CDT Method Acts is a series of virtual workshops focused on exploring methodological techniques for graduate students and emerging scholars in architectural history and adjacent fields. This series of three events, organized by the SAH Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC), will create a forum for discussing… Read more
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DH Monday: Digital Art History IV – Methods, Practices, Epistemologies (Zagreb / October 3-4, 2022)
The international conference “Digital Art History – Methods, Practices, Epistemologies” for the fourth time brings together scholars and practitioners from the fields of digital history of art and architecture, visual culture studies, museology, information science, art and design. Focusing on the notion of complexity, forty-four participants from twelve countries (Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Russia,… Read more
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DH Monday: Issue #7: Zonas de Contacto: Art History in a Global Network?
Have you checked out the latest English-language issue of International Journal for Digital Art History, no. 7 (2021): Zonas de Contacto: Art History in a Global Network? They collaborated on this project with H-ART. Revista de historia, teoría y crítica de arte to present digital art historical research from the Spanish-speaking world, broadly defined. The issue… Read more
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DH Monday: Invisible Landscapes: When Digital Tools Fail to Document
An online search away from any computer are eye-level views of many of the world’s cities. This technology is powerful – allowing people to have an in-depth look at the cities they might one day visit, live in, or work in. It’s a useful tool for understanding buildings on a more comprehensive level than photographs.… Read more