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: 2022 LD4 Conference on Linked Data (July 11-15, 2022 / Zoom)
LD4 Conference on Linked Data: Linking Global Knowledge Co-Chairs Joe Cera, Jim Hahn, and Mary Seem are excited to announce that registration for the 2022 LD4 Conference is open! Join them virtually on July 11-15, 2022 to learn concrete ways that linked data benefits GLAM institutions and discover pathways to participation in linked data. The… Read more
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DH Monday: Researchers Train AI to Attribute Paintings Based on Detailed Brushstroke Analysis
Article by Benjamin Sutton (The Art Newspaper, published 4 January 2022) Art historians may have a new tool for settling the attribution of disputed paintings using artificial intelligence (AI) thanks to research by a cross-disciplinary team led by physicists at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. The research, published in November in the journal Heritage… Read more
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DH Monday: Supporting Curatorial Work with Machine Learning
By Audrey Altman, March 30, 2022. Curatorial work with large archival collections is challenging. In order to find artifacts related to a chosen topic, curators have to sift through thousands – sometimes millions – of materials and determine which are truly relevant. Machine learning can help streamline curatorial workflows by analyzing complex datasets and making… Read more
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UCSB Library Supports a Solution to Avoid Link Rot in Citations
Did you know that most links on the web become non-resolvable after 100 days and that about 70% of news-related links disappear within a day? Even if this alarmingly short lifespan is news to you, we bet you’ve probably encountered a 404 error before (if not multiple times), meaning that the content you were trying… Read more
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DH Monday: Digital Art History Summer School: Collapse, Creativity, and Imagination (Málaga / Aug 29–Sep 3, 2022)
Application Deadline [extended]: June 15, 2022 Acceptance Notification: July 7, 2022 Summer School Dates: August 29-September 3, 2021 (Málaga) The International Digital Art History Summer School (DAHSS) is a joint initiative of the University of Málaga and the UC Berkeley for the organization of training activities in the field of Digital Humanities and Digital Art… Read more
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DH Monday: CFP – Digital Art History – Methods, Practices, Epistemologies IV (Zagreb / October 3-4, 2022)
Abstract Submission Deadline: June 15, 2022 The fourth edition of the conference “Digital Art History – Methods, Practices, Epistemologies” will bring together established and early career scholars, independent researchers, and professionals involved with the transdisciplinary research in Digital Humanities, focusing on Digital Art History, Digital Visual Studies, Digital History of Architecture, and Critical Digital Cultural… Read more