In July of 2015, I visited my best friend Keita in San Diego. At the time, he and I ran Junior Ruckus Inc., a small not-for-profit media production house. Keita found a small gig for us while I was in town: a video promotion for nanoengineer Steven “Hollywood” McCloskey’s fledgling startup, NanoVR, (now known as Nanome Inc.). We met for the first time in his 1000 square-foot lab, where McCloskey was brimming with enthusiasm. Though Keita and I had trouble understanding it, we could tell his project was something special. After shooting and editing the video that very same day, we spent the whole night in Steve’s laboratory.

Steve and I reviewing early Nanome Logotypes. Photo by Keita.

For me, that night was a crash course in STEM. I had spent the prior years of high-school and undergrad immersed in the arts, quick to dismiss anything remotely quantitative. That night, Steve piqued my interest in the elusive world of elite STEM, wherein reclusive geniuses like Grigori Perelman holed-up in dark rooms scribbling away for months on end, unearthing profound truths about the universe, and denying one million dollar prizes for their work. Steve was obsessed with characters like Perelman and John Nash, eccentric, field-defining powerhouses who worked in total isolation, seemingly out of necessity. I, too, became enamored with these figures. Why were they so elusive? It became apparent that science, like art, pushes practitioners to the extremes of personality. But is aberrant behavior inherent to innovation? Does one have to sign off their sanity to get involved? Steve described how binary the world of STEM could be. Wealth, promise, and fulfillment in one hand, neglect, limited resources, and apathy in the other.

Broke Dexter craves new compensation model for science.

Nonetheless, sensing Steve’s passion for the sciences revived the joys I felt as a child mathematician and programmer, two interests I long since abandoned. What Steve was doing and saying felt important. Or at least more important than my film festival submissions, mixtapes and baseball cap designs. Naturally, I had a lot of trouble deciphering what Steve kept repeating that night and in the months that followed: “We need more artists on the [Nanome] team, [Nanome] needs to be more like an art project.”

Steve and I trade headwear. Photo by Keita.

To the proverbial artist, the scientist is an aesthetically-rigid, confounding figure. Conversely, to the scientist, the artist is mythical and cryptic. In the summer we met, Steve and I were what we imagined each other to be. He was pale, tall, wearing a labcoat, and pacing around a near-windowless concrete room filled with beakers and strange electronics. I was dressed in torn clothes of my own design, frail, shaggy, and practically broke. Keita was somewhere in-between the two of us.

Steve and I did share some qualities. We were both outgoing and almost perma-stoked. We were both fans of That Poppy, (before you, of course). Steve was familiar with my home of Hawaii, while I had spent my teenage summers in his eponymous Hollywood. The two of us were engrossed and frustrated by our respective interests. But while Steve sought the measurable and material, I was chasing something much fuzzier.

Artists like myself find themselves vexed by an intangible objective. We’re often trying to create something that transcends definition and measurement: great art is inherently difficult to describe. This romanticism can be as infuriating as it is pretty, but all creatives are familiar with it. Filmmakers, musicians, and visual artists alike compete with one another for relevance and posterity. Artists yearn to define themselves both as unique and as part of the canon of their predecessors. The success of our peers both inspires us and fuels our hatred for them. These are the thrills of the arts. Whether creatives despise or adore one another, they are all mutually intimate with this feeling- the necessity of collaboration and competition in the search for the indescribable. I am certain this is the invisible art “force” that Steve observed, admired, and wanted to cultivate in Nanome.

From The Simpsons

Two years, two seed rounds, and two software releases in, Nanome’s culture embodies a spectrum of artistic values. We take pride in functional focused design, but embrace malleability. Our team’s goal is persistent: break the interfacial bottlenecks choking science. Our methods however, are malleable. We know that the next steps won’t always be clear. Like those of artists, our pushes into the fray require a moderate amount of idealism.

This week, we announced Matryx, a blockchain platform for crowdsourced science. We’ve been working on it since that fabled summer night. Matryx affords STEM a multiverse of new possibilities. We’ve implemented a new model for innovation. The platform design incentivizes both breakthroughs and incremental, derivative progress. Drawing on the nature of the arts, Matryx fosters competition among scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, encouraging them to “steal like artists.” On Matryx everyone gets recognized. On Matryx everyone gets paid.

I’m confident that Matryx will bring the cutthroat but communal drive of the arts to STEM. We aim to honor the citizen-scientist. Let them contribute, let them not be eaten alive by an inhospitable culture. Let them compete with and envy one another. Let them inspire, collaborate with, and celebrate one another.

happy july!

further reading: Introducing Matryx by Steve McCloskey.