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: Virtual Symposium: African Re-storations in and beyond the Museum (online/Sept. 27, 2024 @ 9:00 am EDT/ 6:00 am PDT)
Click here for more information and to register. Within museums, restoration sometimes refers to the processes of conserving, repairing, and reconstructing artworks and artifacts to preserve their original state. This virtual symposium goes beyond the physical and aesthetic engagement of material culture. It proposes a community-centered approach to re-storation that embraces participation, revitalization, and healing. Speakers… Read more
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DH Monday: Here is how to make digital elevation maps in Python in a matter of minutes using TouchTerrain and a few lines of code
By Bence Balogh on Medium Once it occurred to me that I had to make a 3d model of a certain area at the shores of Lake Balaton, Hungary. The area is around the hills of the famous wine area Badacsony. The goal is a format ready for 3d printing… The reason for the job… Read more
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DH Monday: US artists score victory in landmark AI copyright case
by Torey Akers, The Art Newspaper, 14 August 2024 A federal judge in California has blocked an attempt by several AI companies to have portions of a copyright case dismissed As the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright continues to develop in the legal sphere, a group of visual artists have scored a small… Read more
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DH Monday: Act As If You Are a Curator: An AI-Generated Exhibition
Reviewed by Erin Dickey in Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 10, no. 1 (Spring 2024), https://doi.org/10.24926/24716839.18990. Curated by: ChatGPT, with support from Julia McHugh, Julianne Miao, Mark Olson, and Marshall N. Price. Irma Lopez, Alveena Nadim, Maddie Rubin and David Sardá provided research support. Exhibition schedule: Nasher Museum of Art,… Read more
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DH Monday: Copyright Office Releases Part 1 of Artificial Intelligence Report, Recommends Federal Digital Replica Law
NewsNet 1048 , July 31, 2024 Today, the U.S. Copyright Office is releasing Part 1 of its Report on the legal and policy issues related to copyright and artificial intelligence (AI), addressing the topic of digital replicas. This Part of the Report responds to the proliferation of videos, images, or audio recordings that have been digitally… Read more
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New Art Historical Digital Resource: “The Gallery Guide Guide”
This new publication and resource by the Yale University Art Gallery, The Gallery Guide Guide, documents the core values as well as the operational nuts and bolts of the Yale University Art Gallery’s renowned Gallery Guide Program. Authored by former co-leaders of the program Sydney Skelton Simon and Molleen Theodore, the Gallery Guide Guide is… Read more