Change yourself and your environment—with Key Grip, any user can design, scratch and loop a film sequence with him or herself in the leading role. This installation brings together the possibilities of television, video games, and audiovisual performance in a single platform, making it possible to manipulate audio sequences and videos in a three-dimensional environment. 

The Key Grip user is filmed by a camera and his image is then displayed on a screen. By means of a console, microphone or his own movements, he can then modify this scene any way he wants, blow it up into balls, turn it into waves or break it into blocks and let it dance across the screen.

Since the performers and the audience are situated in one and the same environment, this environment can be reinterpreted in any way possible in order to accentuate particular features or to attribute new significance to them.

Key Grip was realized through the support of the Siemens Artist-in-Residence Project at Ars Electronica.
The software was developed by Justin Manor at the MIT Media Lab.

Justin Manor (USA), he has recently completed his studies under John Maeda in the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab. His work there focused on the realtime manipulation of video and audio, and the use of the body as a controller of media events. He also received a Bachelor's Degree in Astrophysics from MIT, and modelled the collisions of neutron stars and black holes. Between his stints at MIT he worked under designer David Small building museum installations and physical information browsers. Justin's work has been shown in the London ICA, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, the Asia Society Museum, and the Museum of Sex in New York.