The Red Dot takes its name from the small sticker that once marked slides in a physical archive, flagging them as worth a second look. We’re keeping that spirit alive here.
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.
The Red Dot © 2025 is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
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New finding aids and inventories from Dumbarton Oaks
The Dumbarton Oaks’ Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA) has published several new finding aids for collections in their online inventory of archival and photographic holdings, AtoM@DO. These holdings include a wide range of topics, including Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art and architecture, prehistoric sites in eastern Turkey and gardens in the United Kingdom. via ICFA Read more
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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