Some pics from Rome and Valencia. Caravaggio, Pizzeria da Baffetto, Cavour 313, Casino Monte Picayo, La Salvaora, INTED 2010, The Westin, Summit Fortyseven, kilometers and kilometers of walking, and, of course, the Pavoni…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45931208@N00/sets/72157623491963567/

Here’s the written version of my presentation at INTED 2010 in Valencia, Spain…

The indie label has long been a badge of honor in the music industry, even though these days it’s just another marketing strategy for the selling of music.  Still, being an indie band on an indie label carries a certain amount of street cred that appeals to a certain audience that sees itself outside the mainstream, even though outsider status can be seen as just another consumer choice.

With the advent of the Internet, the idea of independent media has been completely redefined from this idea of consumer choice.  The Internet is the ultimate form of independent media, granting creative freedom and creative distribution rights to anyone with a computer, without traditional hierarchical restrictions.  The way the internet has changed how we buy and listen to music has not only broken the supply chain of the major players in the music industry, it has also rendered irrelevant the difference between indie and mainstream, except as marketing labels.  Even the concept of “album” has been dismantled by iTunes by-the-song structure.  The same independence has also happened to the way we produce, distribute and consume movies, TV shows, and the news.  Websites like You Tube break down hierarchical barriers by making almost everything by anyone available, free of charge.  Through this strategy, the Internet has altered the chain of supply and delivery by replacing traditional narrow channels of production and distribution with free and/or open access.

The same can be said about the blogosphere.  As democratic mainstream journalism strays from its mission of reporting facts and telling truths toward the promotion of ideological agendas and biased party politics, blogs have picked up the slack and become legitimate sources of information.  In this way, the Internet has leveled the difference between amateur or citizen journalists and the professional journalists of the mainstream media.  It is this leveling power, the destruction of hierarchy and the opening of access to everyone for production and distribution of creativity that defines the Internet as a truly radically transformative media form.

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The last major Caravaggio exhibit in Rome was in 2001; I was fortunate enough to attend that one and right now there’s another major Caravaggio exhibit in Rome at the Scuderie del Quirinale; next week I’ll be attending that one as well.  I never tire of looking at the paintings of Michaelangelo Merisi and it’s impossible not to see them through the vision of Peter Robb’s M., which brings to life not only MM and his circle but the artistic and criminal scene that flourished around Piazza Navona in the 16th century.  Totally fun to walk those cobblestone streets late at night and imagine…if you haven’t read M., I highly recommend it, and if you haven’t experienced canvas after canvas by Caravaggio, well then, andiamo a Roma, la citta’ piu bella. Until June 13th, 2010, which means I’ll be able to go at least a couple of more times.  Like I said, I can never get enough of Caravaggio…

There’s a major exhibition of the works of Modernist artist and author Wyndham Lewis at the Fundación Juan March in Madrid from 5 February to 16 May 2010.  Since I’m in Spain, I think I’ll hop the train to Madrid and check it out. Haven’t been this interested in attending an exhibit since the Samuel Beckett retrospective at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2007. Most of Lewis’s novels are out of print in the USA, and are just starting to be re-released in the UK. Check out Tarr and The Revenge For Love for starters. Used copies available on Alibri. Also, Lewis and Ezra Pound’s great magazine BLAST! has recently been republished by Gingko Press. Highly recommended. Long live the Vortex!

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a special section this week on the demise of Liberal Arts education.  What’s interesting about the debate is that the major premise of the value of a LA education has been proven false both by shifting values in education and the marketplace.  As this series of articles shows, English and other humanities profs, fighting for their jobs in this climate of cutbacks and global recession, are still dragging out the same old clichéd warhorse to justify their collective tenured existence.  Like the record companies and the publishing industry, they can’t see that the world has shifted; its not that their value is misperceived, its simply that they no longer hold the value they claim to have, if they ever did.

Their major argument is: “we teach students nuanced thinking and complex problem solving through the interpretation of literary texts.”   Unlike many humanities profs, I actually took a decade off from academia and worked in the corporate world, and I can tell you not once did I ever hear anyone attribute their success in management to skills learned from interpreting literature.  Managers are paid to do one thing: make decisions and take responsibility for those decisions.  They’re not paid to make the right decisions, as the Peter Principle continues to show, they’re paid to make decisions.  If someone can find an interview with some superstar CEO or entrepreneur who attributes their wealth and success in business to literary interpretation, well, your research skills are better than mine.  Sorry, but the ability to do a complex, nuanced reading of Sarah Orne Jewett does little, if anything, to prepare you for the daily corporate grind. If these LA skills really were that magical in the workplace, most humanities profs would have left academia long ago, cashed in on their supposed mastery of these skills, and retired to a life of helping the poor and downtrodden, instead of exploiting an underclass of grad students and adjuncts to keep their privileged, tenured positions from the budget ax.

The mainstream media often praise the current occupant of the Oval Office for his “complex and nuanced” thinking, but as we’ve witnessed over the last year, this is just code for an inability to make tough, difficult decisions.

You can read the whole series of (frankly dispiriting) articles at www.chronicle.com (subscription may be required).