The DOMAin at Ball State

Using The DOMAin app you can explore student-developed content about art objects owned by the David Owsley Museum of Art at Ball State University. The virtual galleries are curated around themes like politics, religion, and tranquility, which demonstrate how art touches upon a variety of subjects like geology, fashion, chemistry, and aeronautics. Test your knowledge playing the trivia game or test your awareness with the scavenger hunt, and just for fun make a meme and share it on social media. This app will help you experience the arts from a new perspective and develop an appreciation for its role in society.

The foundation of this project began with a few questions. Would a museum experience be more meaningful if the visitor were given more details about the artist’s inspiration or their associations with other artists or other works of art? Would the experience be more memorable if connections were made between a work of art and the social, religious, or political temperament of its period? Could emerging mobile tools and technologies provide a platform to aid visitors in these explorations and discoveries?

For this project, our focus was not to incorporate mobile devices into their coursework or replace the laptop, or even traditional pencil and paper. Instead, we wanted to work with the students and instructor to re-imagine the museum experience in a way that would engage, excite and interest visitors of all ages and backgrounds. We wanted to take advantage of the ability to present information to visitors on the same devices they use for social networking, playing games and browsing the web. We wanted to provide the students with a platform where they could create and deliver their vision of a visit to an art museum.

About AHS 450 and Information Technology at Ball State University:

AHS 450 Art Museum Theory and Practice teaches students about the history and future of the museum field. One major theme in the course is the contemporary reinventing of museums as cultural, educational, entertainment institutions.

The Office of Information Technology collaborates with faculty to imagine, create, and develop apps; deploy and integrate emerging technologies; and provide students with new learning opportunities beyond the classroom. Through these efforts, we integrate technology into course content, stimulate inquiry, and encourage further investigation by creating connections into multiple disciplines.