Talk about mild-mannered exteriors: The storefront window of Slought Foundation, next door to a new Metropolitan Bakery at 40th and Walnut, suggests a staid, if somewhat mysterious, academic organization.

But inside, the joint has been jumping. Slought has hosted more than 100 events since opening in 2002 - 55 events this spring alone. The dizzying list has ranged from appearances by jazz- and experimental-music artists, poetry readings and electronic-media performances, to symposia and conversations, and even a rare screening of Samuel Beckett's only film, Film, starring Buster Keaton.

The walls of its rambling space, converted from part of a long-closed bank and including two former vaults, have been covered by a selection from a 2,000-word manuscript by conceptual artist William Anastasi; an exhibit in honor of jazz pioneer John Coltrane; a show on Israeli architecture; and work by West Philadelphia high school students, among others. If that isn't enough, Slought has published several books, and has a Web site (http://www.slought.org) that offers 150 hours of arts-related recordings.

"I'm actually a little amazed at weathering the schedule," says Aaron Levy, Slought's executive director. All those events are bringing people in, a healthy range of audiences that sometimes packs the odd, L-shaped performance space. If you go now, you will see a show of photographs created collaboratively by a Palestinian and Israeli artist, a sculpture by German artist Hans Haacke, artworks for sale to benefit Slought, and a "poetry engine" - a bank of computers generating reams of "aesthetic texts."

We will now take questions from the audience. Just what is this place? "We're experimenting," Levy says. "You could think of this as a laboratory."

Artist Osvaldo Romberg, a cofounder of Slought with Levy and Penn professor Jean-Michel Rabaté, calls it "an apparatus to promote culture in a different way." It's an alternative art space, but also a haven for talk about art theory and a home for cutting-edge music and poetry (aided by curators Mark Christman and Louis Cabri) as well as performance and architecture: in other words, something new, something that certainly hasn't been seen in Philadelphia before.

Is Slought part of Penn? No. Penn leased the space to Slought, convinced that it might be a good element in the ongoing rejuvenation of the 40th Street corridor at the campus' edge.

What's with the name? There is no Mr. or Ms. Slought behind this foundation. The name, chosen when Slought began as a Web site in 1999, is from an old English word meaning "wetland." An area that's between states of wet and dry and can be made of decentralized pockets is a model for, "in our case, a distributed network of artists, critics and theorists," says Levy. The word slought, pronounced "slawt," is also related to "onslaught."

Speaking of onslaught, how has Slought gone into overdrive so fast, with its barrage of events and initiatives? It's not bankrolled by a single patron and in fact runs on a radically low budget. The answer seems to lie in the energy of its three founders, each a formidable engine of activities and ideas.

Levy, a 1999 Penn graduate, moved to Slought after helping to found and run the Kelly Writers House at Penn. His essays can be discovered in some of Slought's books, and he also has created installations at the Rosenbach Museum and elsewhere that might be called archival conceptual art.

Levy speaks in sentences studded with such words as interstitial, ameliorative and disciplinarity, but is clearly fueled by passion for what he's doing, even a sense of urgency.

"My generation is interested in the '60s," he says, explaining that now, "one in a very dire sense wants a community... that at least in my romanticizing of the '60s I see more evident then." As a child in Westchester County, N.Y., he soaked up inspiration for artistic engagement from musician Pete Seeger and the legendary theater producer Robert Whitehead (A Man for All Seasons, Master Class), both friends of his family. Before Whitehead's death in 2002, Levy spent hours talking with him about issues such as how to make art more accessible.

Romberg and Rabaté are both actual veterans of the radicalizing '60s, Romberg in Argentina and Rabaté in France. (Rabaté has written books on Joyce, Pound and the influential theorists Lacan and Derrida.) Romberg, a charismatic teacher at Penn and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, holds to his early ideals, saying, "I think art can change lives." He's made a specialty of creating cheap, easy-to-transport shows of art reproductions or multiples - a more democratic way of showing art, he feels. In addition to curating visual-art shows at Slought - next fall will see a video retrospective on controversial Austrian performance artist Hermann Nitsch, an old friend of his - he's cooking up two other art spaces to open near Slought later this year.

Is Slought the anti-Kimmel Center? Both Slought and Kimmel are multiarts venues, and they opened within a year of each other; Slought's under-the-radar strategy for funding and programming does seem like a mirror image of the Kimmel Center's big-game approach. But Slought is also different from other start-up arts groups, which usually aspire to grow and become more stable. Its founders talk about giving their project five years, and seeing what it becomes. "We're always shifting," Levy says. Romberg adds, "You can't be forever." It will be interesting to see how this amphibious entity evolves.