Game Art: Pixel Art, Chiptunes, and Crucifixes: The Church Of Whatever (2013)
The Church Of Whatever is a new audiovisual band formed by Spanish artist Entter (ex-Meneo, nee Raúl Berrueco, 1977) and HISS, a young bleep-techno producer from Treviso, Italy. Berrueco i
s widely known for his visual focus on retro arcade and low-fi gaming graphics from the Golden Age of home entertainment. He uses old platforms like the Commodore 64, Sinclair Spectrum and Nintendo's NES and Game Boy to create Game Art. Berrueco has been experimenting with glitches, ROM hacking, trash culture, machinima, visual algorithms, cyberpunk and random scripting for quite some time.Lately Entter and HISS have been mixing chiptunes and blasphemous idea(l)s, pixels and crucifixes to save our rotten souls. Among other things, they argue that "Western Christianity crisis of faith is related to a lack of style. If Vatican had hired Lady Gaga's stylist, we'd all be sitting around in dark churches, munching magic hosts and listening to repetitive organ music." This problem had to be fixed.GameScenes: I have seen the light, finally! When & where will you guys perform again?
Raúl Berrueco: As soon as we can, we're looking for more shows... We're just starting, maybe some Baptism/First Communion/Wedding services?
On April 20, 2013, the duo performed in Barcelona for the first time. It went like this:
Raúl Berrueco: It was sort of an small thing in an art gallery/venue. Kind of public attending these events are very open minded so there was no controversy at all, actually people loved it. They were pretty much staring at the show, enjoying it and screaming all the time all kind of blasphemies. Feedback was very positive, I had some good conversations after the show and people also sent us support messages to our FB fan page.
GameScenes: Are you familiar with Molleindustria's Operation PedoPriest? Was that an influence for you?
Raúl Berrueco: I didn't know about that game but now I love it. PedoPriest is such a great name by the way. Me and my partner, we grew up in a very religious environment, me in Santander, Spain and 'Hiss' the musician he's from Treviso, Italy. I must say that environment is the main influence and inspiration. Anyway if I have to talk about other artists/artworks as influence I should mention for sure Goya and Buñuel.
GameScenes: Ok, what happens next? How do you plan to exploit your disciples and followers? Will you publish a manifesto or a novel-disguised-as self help guide? What about miracles? Will you able to avoid tax payments like Apple or any other respectful cult? Will you get banned from the Apple App Store like all good heretics?
The Church of Whatever
Submitted by Matteo Bittanti