How come one painting can catch our attention while the other does not impress us in the slightest? What makes us tear up when hearing a couple of sounds arranged in a certain order? Even though art might seem to be the domain of imagination and subjective experiences, its reception has a biological dimension as well. Each encounter with a piece of art lights up in our brains a complex network of processes responsible for perception, attention, memory, and emotion. Neurons in our brains analyse shapes, colours, and proportions and compare them to those we have experienced previously to then assign them a certain meaning. This leads to an artistic experience.

30,000 people – that’s how many visitors the Louvre welcomes every day. As the world’s most visited museum, it has become a staple of mass tourism. However, this huge interest made it physically difficult to view the masterpieces. The rise in the popularity of museums is transforming an intimate aesthetic experience into a superficial social one, in which the act of engaging with a work of art gives way to cultural rituals and the pressures of social media. The Mona Lisa – an icon of global culture – epitomises this phenomenon. Her image is used extensively by filmmakers, advertisers, manufacturers of merchandise and clothing, and creators of internet memes.

Can poetry be a product of scientific research? Can photography help us understand emotions better than a questionnaire? More and more researchers are turning to art-based research – an approach that combines science and art to describe human experiences in greater depth. This method has developed, amongst others, from the belief that there is no single, fully objective perspective capable of describing human experience. Scientists are exploring various ways of reaching people and are demonstrating that art can be one such avenue.

This article explores the role of music in contemporary cinema, where the soundtrack is not merely a backdrop to the plot, but above all serves to build successive layers of the film’s narrative. Film music has become an inseparable element of the stories told on the big screen, inviting viewers to journey through the characters’ emotions, diverse locations and plot twists, weaving individual scenes into a coherent whole. Appropriately employed musical styles and instruments, together with the composer’s work, underpinned by extensive knowledge of the history of music and film, play a significant role.

Music as a therapeutic medium is not a modern invention. Even in tribal times, shamans would induce an ecstatic trance during healing rituals, aided by the steady rhythm of drums, hypnotic chanting, and expressive dances. Healing practices gave way to medical knowledge, which for centuries overlooked music. It was not until the 19th century that Canon Howard began to use it to help patients relax in London hospitals. However, music therapy did not emerge as a scientific discipline until the 20th century.

In the popular imagination, graphic design is often reduced to mere aesthetics and superficial embellishments. Modern academic thinking, however, urges us to move away from thinking in terms of ‘pretty pictures’ and instead treat visual identity as an advanced cognitive, social, and cultural tool.

Creating ceramic works requires not only creativity and inspiration, but also extensive knowledge of chemistry and physics. Working with clay and glazes involves constant experimentation, learning about the properties of raw materials and observing the impact of various factors on the appearance and durability of the finished pieces. Setbacks and the unpredictability of the technical processes become part of the creative exploration, whilst experience and knowledge enable these to be transformed into new artistic solutions.

Is creative writing solely the result of talent and inspiration? Of course not, because writing is not just the ability to produce texts, but also a way of developing one’s thinking, expressing oneself and understanding the world around us. Writing can be learnt by developing language skills, through systematic writing practice, and by reading widely and thoughtfully. A degree course in creative writing, which combines practical skills development with literary theory, can also be helpful.

The article examines the relationship between Art Spiegelman’s Maus. A Survivor’s Tale and the historical topography of Sosnowiec, focusing on how the city’s urban space is researched and represented in a narrative of the Shoah. Drawing on Maus, materials published in MetaMaus, archival documents, and historical testimonies, the author demonstrates a high degree of correspondence between the depicted locations and events and the actual experiences of the Jewish community of Sosnowiec. At the same time, the article identifies symbolic elements and historical inaccuracies resulting from the conventions of the comics medium and the mechanisms of postmemory. The study highlights the potential of literary topography research to recover local historical heritage and proposes using the international recognition of Maus to establish a bilingual literary and historical trail in Sosnowiec.