Studio movies.

This essay proposes digital video (DV) as a new centre of gravity for the design/production process of architecture and its kindred arts. DV's capacity to work with synthesised and captured images, that can be modelled and reverse engineered, offers a powerful mode of exploration, iterative development and communication for information-rich projects that depend on a complex mobilisation of team skills and technical resources. The promise of DV is that it taps into the great fund of visual/operational knowledge held in the culture at large, and that it can enable the design/production process to become more responsive and more open to a wider group of interested parties. The essay argues that the fulfilment of this promise becomes increasingly urgent as our moving-image-saturated environment melts the boundaries of place and time, and dissolves the distinctions that separates the permanence of architecture from the transience of events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]