Interview, Fireside Chat
There's an Art to Getting Brilliant People to Surprise Themselves - Kevin Slavin of The Shed
- Higher Education Trends & Risks: Approximately 15 universities in the United States go bankrupt annually, suggesting the current tenured model of higher education may be unsustainable or inappropriate for modern needs.
- Role of Cultural Institutions: Institutions like Cooper Union, the Media Lab, and The Shed provide a "sense of continuity" and a broader context for individuals, counteracting the fragmentation of modern community life found in abandoned churches or obsolete factories.
- Career Trajectory: Kevin Kelly studied sculpture as his only formal degree, utilizing a peripatetic career path to cross industries and master the skill of "drawing out the best work" from brilliant experts in unrelated fields (e.g., connecting computational biologists and floral geneticists).
- Area Code History: The company Area Code, co-founded with Frank Lantz, was bootstrapped by the founders (ages 35 and 38) with no VC funding, relying on their personal savings.
- Area Code Business Model: Instead of targeting a specific market, Area Code operated as a "game design shop" that rapidly prototyped new technologies (e.g., GPS, cell-site location) as they became available, accepting zero efficiency in favor of exploring novel play patterns.
- Area Code Success Factors: The company achieved significant scale (40 employees) and eventual acquisition in 2011 by accident, as they had already mastered the technology stacks required when iOS and Facebook games emerged.
- VR Industry Outlook: Kelly argues that VR has not yet produced its "cutting" moment (analogous to early cinema finding new editing techniques), and he predicts the next major VR innovator will not come from traditional AAA console studios.
- Media Lab Tenure: Kelly joined MIT's Media Lab in 2013 as a "misfit" to bridge the gap between science/engineering and art/design, eventually shifting his research focus from urban games to "urban metagenomics."
- Urban Metagenomics Concept: The project draws parallels between human gut biomes and cities, proposing that cities function as "biological superorganisms" where the local microbiome interacts with inhabitants, influencing health and culture.
- The Shed Philosophy: Kelly views his role at The Shed as the inverse of his time at the Media Lab: bringing science and engineering into a cultural/artistic environment rather than bringing art into a science lab.
- Architectural Innovation: The Shed features a 120-foot outer shell that physically moves (weighing 8 million pounds) at 12 mph, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Rockwell Group to allow for flexible, undefined programing.
- Unique Facility Design: Unlike traditional museums, The Shed combines large-scale performance spaces with exhibition galleries to allow programming to dictate the format rather than the other way around.
- Digital Ticketing Strategy: The Shed will eliminate physical paper tickets entirely in 2019, using smartphones as the primary entry mechanism to solve the logistical issue of managing guest flow in a frictionless environment.
- Broadcasting Evolution: The Shed rejected traditional satellite broadcast trucks in favor of high-bandwidth digital live streaming, aiming to create a "synchronizing signal" that connects a global audience to a live event in real-time rather than an archive.
- Synchronizing Signal: Kelly posits that the primary value of 21st-century cultural institutions is to provide a "synchronizing signal" that aligns the attention of dispersed individuals simultaneously, fostering a shared limbic experience.
- Future Career Goal: Kelly's long-term goal is not to achieve domain expertise in a single field but to continue exercising the ability to work effectively across emerging disciplines, maintaining a sense of "youth" by constantly learning new things.