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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Another fantastic film archive
British Pathé was the source for filmed world news, entertainment, and general oddities and information, from the beginning of the 20th century for the next 50 years. Their ‘cinema newsreels’ were shown before the feature in movie theaters in Britain as well as many other parts of the world, and the little rooster logo was… Read more
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Nationalmuseum releases hi-res images on Wikimedia Commons
This month, Sweden’s Nationalmuseum contributed over 3100 high quality digital images of works from their collection into Wikimedia Commons. While the museum’s long-term goal is greater visibility and accessibility to their collection, in the short term it also provides access to artworks not currently on view, since the museum is undergoing renovation and most of… Read more
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Nine Architectural Photography Tutorials to Help You Get the Right Shot
Capturing the perfect architectural photograph can be far more difficult than one might anticipate. In light of this, ArchDaily compiled a list of nine architectural photography tutorials to help you get the right shot every time. Read more
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Interconnection: projection mapping winner of iMapp Bucharest 2016
Interconnection is the winner of both Jury’s Choice Award and People’s Choice Award at iMapp 2016 – that is, the 2016 iMapp Bucharest international Video Mapping Competition, “one of the biggest 3D video-mapping shows in the world, an international competition that brings design and contemporary art directly on the facade of approximately 22,000 square meters… Read more
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Revelations about the scope of Angkor Wat’s communities
This fascinating article in the New York Times describes how archaeologists have recently been able to shed light on the vastness and advanced level of the settlements of the Khmer empire (802 to 1431 AD). The obstacles of the thick jungle setting has made excavation very difficult, but a new technique using “lidar” (Light Detection… Read more
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NYARC Discovery: Web archives and photoarchive images at your fingertips
NYARC Discovery is a new research tool from the libraries of the Brooklyn Museum, the Frick Collection, and The Museum of Modern Art. With a single search, you can find web archives along with books, journal articles, auction catalogs, traditional archives and a host of other materials, including nearly 200,000 catalog records and over 75,000… Read more