Week 3

This week’s lecture provided time for us to watch Jean Luc Godard’s film Alphaville, made in 1965. The film centres around a detective agent from the ‘Outlands’ who enters Alphaville – a large area controlled by Professor Von Braun and an obscenely large computer referred to as Alpha-60. The great power of Alpha-60 has caused citizens of Alphaville to lose the ability to think, feel and love. The movie was quite hard to understand, but the main issue derived from the it was that of ever changing and evolving technology and its impact on humans. It stirred thought as to the perceptions of the movie at the time of it's release. In 1965 the issues and ideologies explored would have been outlandish and hard to digest, whereas we now look back over thirty years later to find the technologies are now standard and widely accessed, although the computer has not yet managed to take over human thought. Once getting past the initial frustrations of subtitles, novice special effects and the like, the movie can be appreciated for it's artistic value and important place in the realm of communication and technology.

In this week’s tutorial the film Alphaville was discussed. Also touched on were the views on the movie from 1965 as opposed to today. It was found that the ideas the film presented would have seemed obscene and outlandish to those who viewed the film in 1965, but are now looked viewed as old and basic, with technology having evolved in leaps and bounds since the film’s making.
Also, the blogs were worked on, and a new feature of ‘friend adding’ was discovered. This will enable students to share ideas, provide constructive critisism and form an interactive online presence.