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: 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
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DH Monday: Machine Learning + Libraries: A Report on the State of the Field
Digital collections in libraries are vast—and growing, as the Library of Congress continues to digitize cultural heritage materials and acquire new born digital collections. At the same time, the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence has grown exponentially. Those at LC Labs explore how technology can help fulfill the Library of Congress’s vision that… Read more
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DH Monday: UCSB Library Joins Data Curation Network (DCN)
UCSB Library’s Research Data Services (RDS) recently became a member of the Data Curation Network (DCN), a group of professionals from U.S. academic institutions and nonprofit data repositories who seek to improve researcher support through their collective expertise around data curation services. UCSB is now one of 12 DCN partner institutions in the network. Members… Read more
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DH Monday: Call for Proposals – The Art Museum in the Digital Age-2021
The Art Museum in the Digital Age (Vienna, 14-15 Jan 21) Deadline: September 1, 2020 The Belvedere Research Center is organizing its third international conference on the digital transformation of the art museum. The 2021 edition will focus on online collections and the re-contextualization of the museum object in the digital universe. During the COVID… Read more