Animal lovers interested in art can now get a new CD-ROM which combines both subjects. Art Store Ö Looking At Animals, one of an educational series from Anglia Multimedia, includes works of art featuring animals from 48 British and Irish galleries and museums. The disc is aimed at providing schools with öa practical guide which links classroom projects to works of art which can be seen in local museumsò but it is attractive enough to appeal to anyone who enjoys looking at pictures and likes to know something about them. The price is ú50 +VAT, or ú55 from Archive, and like others in the series, it runs on machines with RISC OS 3.1 or later and 4Mb of RAM and can also be used on PCs and Apple Macintoshes.
The disc is a mixture of picture book, art appreciation tutorial and reference work, with its main menu screen as the gateway to an Artistsæ Index, a Picture Database, Activity Sheets for schools, a choice of Themes to explore and a Museum Database. There is an Info button, for a screenful of general information, and a Help button which gives explanations of what each of the main options offers.
The principal one of these, the Themes Menu, provides a choice of pictures and information on Domestic Animals, Trained Animals, Wild Animals and Working Animals, each of which is further subdivided. The Artistsæ Index contains biographies, the Picture Database allows all the paintings to be viewed full screen, the Museum Database gives details of where the pictures can be seen and has öthumbnailsò of all the works grouped by galleries. The 135 activity sheets, in Draw format, provide lesson plans and ideas for projects suitable for school work in Key Stages one, two and three.
Themes
Clicking on the Themes icon brings up a screen offering a choice of going directly to any of the four subjects or browsing through a series of other menu screens offering the sections available under each heading. For example, the first theme, Trained Animals, has sections on Horse Racing, Dressage/Riding Style, Animal Portraits, Animal Cruelty and Welfare, Hunting, Still Life, Animals in Entertainment, Animals and War, and Sculpture, all instantly accessible with the click of a button.
Each section has a brief page of introduction leading on to a series of screens with up to four captioned pictures on each. Icons at the bottom of the screen allow a return to menus or introductory pages or the help facility. Clicking on a picture enlarges it and offers more icons to provide information on the picture, the artist and the gallery where it can be seen. Some of the information screens have an extra icon of a man with an ear trumpet, which is not explained anywhere. A click on this produces a sound effect to go with the picture, such as the call of the animal depicted. This is not always very appropriate. Dogs of vastly different size and breeds all have the same bark, for example, but it does introduce a touch of fun which children will enjoy.
Feed the lions
The information is presented in short, easily read, sections and includes some fascinating facts of the Trivial Pursuits variety among the more cultural learning. A note on the picture of the Royal Menagerie in the Tower of London offers the information that the price of admission in the reign of Henry III was three halfpence or the donation of a cat or dog to feed the lions! Not many animal lovers know that.
Some words are highlighted in red and clicking on them brings up more information, which can be anything from a brief definition to a full-screen essay. These include explanations of artistic terms, further background information on the artist or the people who inƒuenced them and details of the roles played by the animals in the setting in which they are shown.
Text and pictures can both be saved out for use in the studentsæ own work and there is also a toolbox with a text finder and a notepad which can have its contents saved at the end of the session. Saving information from the Museum database has its problems as the details are given in separate panels for Address, Hours, Disabled facilities and Admission fee and only the text in the panel clicked over is saved, not the whole screen. In fact, clicking over the title of a panel will save just the title name!
The disc could have benefited from some closer checking before issue as there are a few minor blemishes. One picture, Hydrangeas, appears on both pages three and seven in the Domestic Animals section. Clicking on the highlighted name öTowneleyò produces a note on Miracle Plays rather than Charles Towneley, the collector. The noun ölicenceò is given the American spelling of ölicenseò, which is normally used in English for the verb, and this could prove irritating in schools. However, these are very minor faults in a large and generally impressive work.
Explore and learn
Most children like animals and are attracted by pictures of them and this is a very well planned disc which will catch the interest and allow a child to explore and learn about the artists and their work in the way he or she finds most interesting. For adults, it is a fascinating equivalent of a coffee table book, ideal for casual browsing but with information quickly to hand whenever a picture seizes the attention and arouses the desire to know more.áuá
