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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Architecture books now free online
Statistics show that an ever increasing number of people are choosing to read books on a device rather than in print form. In that vein, you can now read these classic works of architectural literature for free online from sources like Internet Archive and Google Books. via ArchDaily Read more
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Damien Hirst to build his own city
Artist Damien Hirst has been given permission to construct his own city, to be called Damien-on-Sea, on the North Devon coast of England. The city will be built from the ground up, including 75 “affordable” homes to be built over the next 10-15 years. Given that this is the man who encrusted a human skull… Read more
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Interactive WWI and WWII photographs
The Red Dot folk like “Then and Now” photographs, and the Guardian has a regular series we enjoy. They are primarily photos from World Wars I and II, such as these 0f WWI Western Front sites (this is the Vareddes Town Hall in France), but they have also done some pre- and post-hurricane photos,… Read more
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Travel days are over for these paintings
There’s an interesting article in The Guardian about the growing number of paintings which no longer travel from their home repositories. The reasons are plenty, including fragility (Degas’ Danseuse), weight (The Winged Victory of Samothrace), size (Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana), or size AND fragility (Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa). Another recurring hindrance to… Read more
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Creating anamorphosis, and other optical illusions
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHPKf_Hj1GA] This artist, “Vamos”, and his YouTube channel, are a recent discovery. Vamos specializes in drawing and painting illusions, and he films the process in time-lapse. The one linked above showing the creation of anamorphosis using a Rubik’s Cube is especially clever. If you are intrigued and want to see more, visit his YouTube… Read more
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Developments in Reverse Image Searching
We have talked about reverse image searching with TinEye here in the past – here is some recent research that takes the concept further. John Resig collaborated with the Frick Art Reference Library to analyze images lacking identification from their collection. Using software developed off the TinEye model he was able to establish trends, and… Read more