Page - 13 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

Shaw and most of the crew of Covenant after they land on the planet, a place de- scribed by the robot himself as a “Paradise”.11 In an allusion to Milton’s Paradise Lost, but in a much darker way, two stages of the creation (the Engineers and hu- manity) are melted then destroyed. Even then, David’s quest is not completed with- in this movie: he seeks to reach the ultimate creator, God himself, the One Elisabeth Shaw believed in even up to her death. This discourse about origins, creation, and genesis has been a recurring theme not only in cinema but also in other artistic mediums. In some cases, artists ap- proach this issue by extrapolating it to the world of natural sciences like biology. For example, these two movies, which deal directly with the subject of science fiction and religion through biological experimentation, could be linked with performances developed by the art collective Ultrafuturo, founded by artists Boryana Rossa and Oleg Mavromatti in 2004. In their manifesto, they declared they believe “in the inde- pendence of the machine consciousness and in the unavoidable revolt of intelligent slave-machines against their ruthless cynical enslavers-people”. With The Mirror of Faith bio-art installation (2006), they went further and examined the relationship between science and religion, exploring the controversial theory of the “God gene” maker, since from the moment he became sentient, he knew he’d already won. He is indestructible, and determined to make creatures that imitate his drive for total domination”, Wilkinson 2017. 11 Paradise Lost, according to Ridley Scott, was the original title of the movie, even when it was already in production (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A524UjfdoA8&feature=youtu.be) [accessed 12 September 2019]. Fig. 3: The Mirror of Faith, 2014, University of Barcelona, http://boryanarossa.com/en/the-mirror- of-faith/ [accessed 27 December 2019]. 12 | Elie Yazbek www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 7–15