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The Distant Viewing Lab studies how messages are formed, transmitted, and received through visual and multimodal media. Film, television, photography, and the platforms that carry them shape what people see, remember, and believe; we develop computational methods to measure that process at scale. Our current focus is film and television, where we quantify how moving images are constructed and connect those choices to the industries that produce them and the audiences that interpret them. The work draws on statistics, media studies, cognitive science, and the computational social sciences, and we take seriously the questions of measurement, evidence, and replication that arise when culture becomes data. Because visual media are also cultural objects, we engage closely with critical cultural and data studies, aiming to make explicit the interpretive act of algorithmic logic. We build open tools and datasets so that researchers across these fields can reuse and extend our work. The Lab is directed by Taylor Arnold and Lauren Tilton. For the theoretical basis of the lab, see Distant Viewing (MIT Press, 2023).
Learn to study images and video with AI in one of two four-day, Mellon-funded Distant Viewing workshops: virtual on 15–18 February, or in person at the University of Richmond on 8–11 March, with travel stipends provided. Open to researchers, students, and archive, library, and museum professionals at any career stage; no technical background required. Applications are due 31 October 2026. Read the call and apply →
