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 Getty Research Collections Viewer Offers Digital Access to Vast Archives
Now online in its initial release, the Getty’s Research Collections Viewer offers a visual way to browse and search their archival collections. The Viewer aims to make it easier to see what they have in our research collections—rare primary source material such as artists’ papers, prints, and photographs—as well as contextual information such as related… Read more
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Job Opportunity: Postdoc and Doctoral Positions in Digital Art History
1 Postdoc and 2 Doctoral Positions in Digital Art History FNS Project: VISUAL CONTAGIONS Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland, January 1, 2021 – December 31, 2025 Application deadline: Sep 15, 2020 The project VISUAL CONTAGIONS (dir. Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the Chair for Digital Humanities at the University of… Read more
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DH Tuesday (after Labor Day Monday): Talk: Identifiable Individuals and Reality What Do We Describe and Why
Mark your calendar: “Identifiable Individuals and Reality: What Do We Describe and Why” Dr. Martin Doerr, from Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH) A talk from the Center for Spatial Studies Fall 2020 series, Knowledge Representation and GeoHumanities Tuesday, September 17 | 11:00 am The virtual talk will argue “that only a smaller… Read more
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DH Monday: Find What You Didn’t Know You Wanted with Polygrid
Check out Polygrid, a developing image search & discovery engine powered by deep learning and PowerDP. Try out a demo via the Rijksmuseum, who has put over 400,000 of their works as hi-res images in the public domain; Polygrid has captured more than 200,000 of them from the Dutch Rijksmuseum Open Data Collection and arranged… Read more
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DH Monday: CFP – “Digital Art History and the Future of the Article” (CAA 2021 Conference)
Call for Papers College Art Association (CAA) Conference, February 10–13, 2021: “Digital Art History and the Future of the Article” Deadline for submissions: September 16, 2020 This session, sponsored by the Digital Art History Society (DAHS), will critically examine the digital art history article by considering current trends and best practices in digitally-born, online journals.… Read more
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DH Monday: DAHJ 2020 Conference Videos Now Available
Art History in Quarantine: Digital Transformations, Digital Futures Original Conference Date: April 10, 2020 From DAHJ: In the age of shelter-in-place, digital literacy is no longer optional. In just a few weeks, we have seen an unprecedented infrastructural shift to video conferencing, online pedagogy, and project management software. What presents itself as a challenge to… Read more