There's an Art to Getting Brilliant People to Surprise Themselves

Slavin questions whether universities can keep relying on models that may no longer serve students, noting that about 15 U.S. universities go bankrupt each year. He sees schools and cultural institutions as places that connect people to a larger community and shared ideas. Friendships and professional ties also shape what people can do and who they become.

Although Slavin studied sculpture, he learned to work across fields by partnering with people who have deep expertise. He describes his role as starting with an idea, then bringing in collaborators who expand it and help find the next person who can take it further. He also helps explain the work’s value to funders, drawing on eight years in advertising.

At Area/Code, Slavin and Frank Lantz built a game design shop that tried new technologies as they appeared, including cell-site location, early GPS phones, iOS, and Facebook games. The approach meant repeatedly solving technical problems without building on the previous project, but it prepared the team to enter new platforms as they scaled. Slavin says they grew to about 40 people without making growth the priority.

At the Media Lab, Slavin moved from games toward biology and explored cities as living systems, including through the idea of urban metagenomics. He says that work was meant to communicate an idea through culture, rather than primarily to publish scientific information. At The Shed, he wants artists and scientists to shape work without starting from a fixed format, and sees risk as part of that process.

Slavin describes plans for The Shed that included phone-based tickets, live digital broadcasts, and commissioning scientists to create work for a museum setting. He argues that a live event can connect people at the same time across a building and the internet, instead of being treated mainly as an archive. Shared attention, he says, can be a valuable part of what cultural institutions offer.