To experience the Infinite Museum, visitors can go to theinfinitemuseum.com.
If visitors to the David Owsley Museum of Art see people jumping around pieces of artwork, it's because an app told them to.
The app, the Infinite Museum, was developed by students developed to introduce a new interactive way to explore the museum. It is an interactive web application that provides users with prompts and information on the different artwork in the museum.
Timothy Berg, an assistant professor of honors humanities, was in charge of the project, which got its name from the infinite number of experiences one can have at a museum.
“I love the traditional museum experience, but I recognized that many people find it intimidating or cold, requiring a lot of knowledge of art history to enjoy,” he said. “I think there are creative ways to enjoy art in museums and I wanted to learn more about them.”
The Infinite Museum uses 1,500 prompts that are used to “spark discussion, surprising contemplation, and new connections,” according to a press release. “They encourage visitors to move, sketch, question and interact with others.”
“We’re trying to prompt you to think about art in a unique, sometimes humorous, sometimes very serious, sometimes a mixture of the two ways. I haven’t seen this anywhere else,” Berg said.
The project was made up of students from a variety of majors. They did all of the design, writing and research to make the web application. They also traveled to New York City to research other museums.
Alyson Walbridge, a senior history and art history major who worked on the project, said this is unlike any educational tool other museums use.
“Rather than bogging them down with information and telling them where to go and learn, we’re giving them a spark that should ignite some sort of creative thought or experience while they’re in the museum,” Walbridge said.
Janie Fulling, a sophomore digital storytelling and cultural narratives major, said they wanted to take away the stigma of museums being only for higher education.
“We wanted people to be like, 'Oh, I want to go there on a date,' or, 'I want to go to the museum when I have free time,'” Fulling said.
Berg said most museums are working on using technology to engage visitors, but none that they have found work like the Infinite Museum.
With museums struggling to obtain visitors under the age of 40, museums are using technology to try and rein a younger crowd in.
Fulling said younger people would be more likely to visit museums if they had this kind of technology.
“I think museums wouldn’t be seen as high brow places anymore,” she said. “Lots of museums have different tour apps, but what they haven’t done is taken you out of that art history perspective, and that’s what we wanted to do. After our showcase, we had so many people say, ‘I’m going to come back here.'"
The Infinite Museum was created to work with the David Owsley Museum of Art, but 400 of its prompts aren’t created with a specific piece of artwork in mind, meaning they could be used at any museum in the world.
“Art can be a lot of different things, and that’s what I learned most this semester [working on the project] and what I want other people to learn," Fulling said. "As long as it means something to you, that’s important and that’s valid.”
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