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: Symposium: Technological Revolutions and Art History
Join the Frick Library’s Digital Art History Lab in a webinar series – “Technological Revolutions and Art History” – that explores the role technology has played in the development of the field of art history. Historically, science and the humanities were not considered two discrete disciplines: the separation of these two branches of knowledge developed… Read more
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DH Monday: Blackness, Immobility, & Visibility in Europe (1600-1800): A Timeline
Blackness, Immobility, & Visibility in Europe (1600-1800) is a crowdsourced timeline that “chronicles the representation and regulation of black bodies in Europe, circa 1600-1800. As a tool for research and teaching, it allows users to cross-reference artworks and historical events in spatial and visual relation to one another. For an introduction to the timeline, the… Read more
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Take a Virtual Ride Down Sunset Boulevard with Ed Ruscha
From The Art Newspaper Blog: Before Google Street View, there was Ed Ruscha. In 1966, the Los Angeles artist first drove along the Sunset Strip with a motorised camera mounted to the back of his truck, using it to photograph the entire street in a manner that uncannily predicted today’s online mapping technology. He compiled… Read more
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DH Monday: Diversity in Digital Publishing Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
Diversity in Digital Publishing Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Submission Deadline: November 15, 2020 Brown University invites applications for a one-year Diversity in Digital Publishing Postdoctoral Research Associate appointment. As a member of Brown’s Center for Digital Scholarship, based at the University Library, the postdoctoral fellow will work as part of a multi-skilled team of experts to… Read more
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DH Monday: CFP – Method Acts Workshop
Method Acts is a series of virtual workshops focused on scholarly techniques for graduate students and emerging scholars in architectural history and adjacent fields. This series of three events will be a forum for discussing approaches to our work. Each 75-minute workshop format will consist of 3 presentations on selected methods, presented by invited doctoral… Read more
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DH Monday: CFP – Special Issue on the Material Image. Affordances as a New Approach to Visual Culture Studies
Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine Call for Essays – Issue 7: Special Issue on the Material Image. Affordances as a New Approach to Visual Culture Studies Essay Deadline: November 27, 2020 Issue Publication: scheduled for early March 2021 Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine, an online, biannual, and peer–reviewed online… Read more