NEW YORK, NY.- Daata, the leading platform for digital art, is pleased to announce a new expansive art and NFT gaming project with artist and critic, Kenny Schachter. POP PRINCIPLE: THE ART GAME, created by Kenny Schachter and powered by Daata, is an ecosystem of two teams: the traditional art world and the new guard NFT players. The game features characters in each camp. Art critic Jerry Saltz, legendary mega-dealer Larry Gagosian, and Yayoi Kusama are on the traditional art side, while Nigerian digital artist Osinachi, NFT-record shattering artist Mike Winkelmann (aka ‘Beeple’), Paris Hilton, and artist Refik Anadol, who is known for his large scale machine intelligence artworks, representing the crypto team. The Swiss art curator, Hans Ulrich Obrist, serves as a neutral player, paying homage to his home country.

These familiar characters were created by Kenny Schachter and were released at Kenny Schachter’s exhibition at The NFT Gallery in New York City on May 18, where they were offered on sale as NFTs via popprinciple.kennyschachter.art for one month, which ends on June 17, 2023.

Each round of the game will consist of five to ten characters all released as Open Editions. The most minted character from each round will be considered the winner, and the collector who holds the greatest number of the winning character at the end of the round will receive a unique physical sculpture of the winning character. The Leaderboard will be visible on the POP PRINCIPLE website via popprinciple.kennyschachter.art and after four rounds, the four winning characters will face-off for ultimate supremacy.

HOW TO PLAY

Pick your players from the Art and NFT worlds
Mint unlimited editions of your favourite characters
The most collected character is at the top of the leaderboard
Your goal is to collect the most overall collected character

PRIZES

Win Special Prizes for minting the most popular character
The leading collector wins a unique Kenny Schachter sculpture The top 50 collectors will all receive a special NFT airdrop Attain Artworld Greatness

“When people deviate from the norm, the tendency is to push away, criticize, and dismiss rather than encourage an unorthodox approach to the status quo, which could usually benefit from a swift kick in the ass,” said Kenny Schachter. “That especially rings true in the art world. Change is essential to
rupture states of complacency and to establish new paradigms in art and science. It’s a shame that contrarian behavior is so readily perceived as threatening and deleterious instead of embraced. This is precisely analogous to the traditional art world’s knee-jerk reaction to crypto art, and is what POP PRINCIPLE is ultimately inspired by.”

Each character teeters on the edge of its inherent power plays, deals, social media hustling, celebrity, and networking. Based on the character chosen, users will battle for success in gaining notoriety, status, artworks and wealth, by being shrewd, charismatic, charming, devious, dangerous, clever, unscrupulous, or simply whatever it takes. We all aim to be good, but some of us may just be bad.

“It’s an honour to work with Kenny on this inspiring new project. The artworld is evolving at a rapid pace and it has created an inevitable divide.” said David Gryn, Founder of Daata. “POP PRINCIPLE: THE ART GAME intends to shed light on this topic in a playful yet meaningful way. It is a way to bring together two sides of the artworld and inspire a fun thought-provoking conversation that will hopefully bring the two sides together.”

POP PRINCIPLE: THE ART GAME was released on May 18th. The purpose of the game is to give people the opportunity to become a key player in this fantastical game-play world of adulation and veneration of artists and technology, as well as share the excitement of performative exhibitions and deals.

Kenny Schachter has been curating contemporary art shows in museums and galleries while teaching art history and economics for more than thirty years between Switzerland and the United States.

Schachter has a column on Artnet.com and contributes to various international publications, including the New York Magazine and The Times Magazine (UK). After making digital art for decades, Schachter has spearheaded the traditional art world’s adaptation of Non Fungible Tokens in 2020-1 by lecturing at Yale, Cooper Union, Harvard Law School, Columbia University, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Hirschhorn Museum, among other institutions. Schachter had a retrospective of his art at New York's Rental Gallery in 2018, and solo shows at Kantor Gallery in LA (Feb. 2019) and Nagel Draxler in Berlin (Jan. 2022). He is the subject of a documentary in production, directed by Chris Smith (Tiger King/Fyre Festival) and a Hulu/ABC NFT film. Schachter lives in New York.

Daata is the leading platform for digital art, producing, commissioning, exhibiting, curating, and selling all forms of digital art. Since it was founded in 2015, it has been a leading force in pushing the boundaries of art and technology. Daata brings to life the most ambitious artworks by pioneering and celebrated contemporary artists. With a mission to introduce new technologies to the traditional art market, Daata has commissioned more than 400 artworks by over 100 artists and has collaborated internationally with galleries, museums, collections, art fairs, festivals and other organizations including NASA, Hammer Museum, Julia Stoschek Collection, The Bass, Art Basel, Frieze, Phillips, NADA, Times Square Arts, Matte Projects, Park Avenue Armory, Soho House, CitizenM, NeueHouse, Hauser & Wirth, KOKO, Marian Goodman, and Thaddaeus Ropac. Daata’s latest Web 3 project Wisdoms for Neknel by artist collective Keiken is launching on June 1st 2023.