Over the past few decades in landscape architecture the new trend can be observed – putting artistic earthworks into public space. New ideas, whose roots date back to prehistoric times, have a close relationship with the artistic mainstream of land art. This paper is an attempt to determine the reasons for the use of expressive terrain as an essential factor in modern parks compositions, for example European and American facilities.

Personality, demographics and art experience proved to play an important role in reactions to visual art. Nevertheless, research attempts that take into account all those factors when determining predictors of aesthetic responses to different artistic styles are quite rare. The study presented here investigates predictors of aesthetic experience across figurative, abstract and contemporary paintings in individuals with varying expertise.

Students enrolled in Sport, Humanities and the Arts programmes (N = 181) declared their art exposure and filled out personality measures (Big Five, alexithymia, need for closure). Next participants evaluated three paintings using a tool constructed by the authors to track various dimensions of aesthetic reactions (i.e. negative/positive affective responses, self-references, explicit knowledge and perceived mastery of the artwork).

Reactions to figurative painting depended mostly on formal knowledge about arts, not personality traits. Aesthetic perception of abstract art rely not only on art exposure, but also on some individual characteristics (openness to experience, tolerance of ambiguity and ability to identify one’s own emotions and track their source). Reception of contemporary art was predicted mostly by art exposure variables and in the case of negative emotionality by ability to identify one’s own emotions and track their source.

Both formal art education and art experience were stronger predictors of aesthetic responses than personality traits, for all art styles and dimensions of aesthetic experience. Personality predictors were significant mostly for abstract art. Personal interest in the arts seems to be as good predictor of aesthetic reactions as formal expertise.

In this paper, the question of religious potential of contemporary art is posed only in relation to visual arts, which contain the concept of religious art. The difficulty in answering it stems from the lack of consensus on the relevant criteria for determining if a given work of art is a religious one. These criteria might include the author’s faith and the religious topic, the liturgical or devotional function, as well as a style that is capable of expressing the sacred. The issue of how these criteria function in contemporary art cannot be answered without taking a closer look at two moments essential for the development of religious art. The first was the Renaissance, when the aesthetic values of a work began to give way to theological determinants. The second was the nineteenth century with its attempts to create a new canon of religious art. Both of these critical moments in the development of sacred art show that the religious potential of art depends on the concomitance of many factors. The main problem is finding a new form, a new style able to express the sacred and engage in dialogue with contemporary art as once the icon would.

The article discusses basic issues related to Polish anthroponomastic terms, their development and frequency, taking into account the variability of terminological units and the co-existence of native and foreign forms (usually Greek or Latin). It presents problems related to defining a term, determining its scope or (in particular cases) status, indicating preferred, permissible or non-recommended variant forms, selection (reduction) of sub-terms, the existence of doublets with a grammatical number, acceptance or rejection of new terms, etc. In the text, among others, the following sources were used: the dictionary “Osnoven sistem i terminologija na slovenskata onomastika” [“Basic system and terminology of Slavic onomastics”] (1983), an article by Mieczysław Karaś “W sprawie polskiej terminologii onomastycznej” [“On Polish onomastic terminology”] (1968), studies by Henryk Górnowicz (1988) and Ewa Jakus-Borkowa (1987), encyclopedia “Polskie nazwy własne” [“Polish proper names”] (1998), the compendium “Słowiańska onomastyka” [“Slavic onomastics”] (2002–2003) and selected articles published in the journal “Onomastica”. The second part of the article presents the history, scope and definitions of the term ethnonym // ethnic name (based on selected compendia, monographs and contributory studies), paying attention to the types of names it covers. In addition, a preliminary structure of an entry in the terminological dictionary has been outlined, including such elements as: the term, its definition, variability // equivalent term, origin // explanation, its English equivalent, examples // usage, context of use, and additional aspects.

The work presents a comparison of some sound attributes perceived at a multichannel and stereo playback of musical recordings. The width of the virtual source, coherence impression, total size of sound scene, general quality and balance were the subjects of interest after the format reduction in accordance with the ITU recommendation. The results showed that evaluation of these attributes depends on the way the original audiosphere has been created in the surround system, for example, for a narrow virtual source the mix-down process causes only a small change in its size but for a broad source the observed degradation is significant. In addition, different ways of conversion from the multichannel to stereo format have been tested for compatibility.

The process of authenticating artworks, whether musical, painting or architectural, is constantly changing. And sometimes it is influenced by ideology.

The text attempts to show the forgotten beauty in architecture. It seems, that the “drawn” architecture can reveal more than the real — built one. The avant-garde of the early 20th century killed in art the need to strive for beauty. Novelty and contemporarily advertising form of architecture are becoming the most important. However, the problem of beauty seems to be still interesting in art. Architecture is slowly departing from the functionalist way of creating, yet it cannot return to the beauty, that once was so important. It is the drawn one, carrying the message of unreality, that makes it possible to return to the forgotten approach to creation. Architects’ drawings can bring back a visionary and idealistic message.

The presence of art in historic representative buildings is widespread and common. It is not surprising, therefore, that it is a frequent tool used in the transformation processes of these structures. A surprise, however, may be a situation where, instead of the art from the period of the creation of a given monument, the contemporary, multimedia or engaging the viewer cultural activities occur. Therefore, the key questions are the role of such forms of intervention in the historical representative interiors and the possibility of co-existing old and new. It is not without significance for objects under conservator’s protection that there are special requirements that the intervention must fulfill to be installed. The subject of considerations in this work are case studies of the application of contemporary multimedia art in the representative spaces of historical objects. The purpose of the article is to examine types of such artistic interventions resulting from the relationship between a work of art and exhibition space and their mutual influence.