Entertainment engineering specialist WIcreations celebrated its 10th birthday in
style over the weekend with a large party for its many fans, friends, clients and
acquaintances in home town Heist-op-den-Berg, Belgium.
The company was founded by Hans Willems in 2006 to tackle all those challenging,
crazy and innovative projects that occur in the industry … with style, flair and
imagination.
Now with 14 full time staff all with multi-disciplinary knowledge. a team of top
project managers, an extensive R “n’ D department, an international portfolio of
clients and numerous projects, large and small, standard and esoteric on the CV –
there’s every reason to celebrate the first decade of WIcreations!
WIcreations is engaged on a constant stream of eclectic projects from installations
to live events and performances, each needing clever elements of customized
rigging, flying, lifting, turning and moving objects and systems … plus those little
touches of ingenuity that make the WI phenomenon so unique.
WIcreations kicked off its first year of trading in 2006 auspiciously designing stage
and movement elements for Holiday On Ice’s “Mystery’ show, the Asian Games in
Doha, Bon Jovi, U2’s Vertigo tour and Belgian rockers Clouseau.
Highlights from the last 10 years included devising the movement and control for a
massive video constructed from 384 panels of Lighthouse R16 that tracked 110
metres along platform 9 of St Pancreas station in London for the launch of High
Speed One (HS1), splitting into 8 sections and various other configurations during
the show.
Another was engineering the supporting grid for U2’s incredible 360 tour’s
concertina-ing video screen in 2009; then the company’s expertise was harnessed to
wirelessly slide a seating tribune – complete with 2000 audience – 90 metres back
and forth throughout the ground-breaking 14-18 Spektakel in Mechelen in 2014, as
well as 11 scenery wagons which moved on, off and around the performance area.
WI’s work has embraced all sectors – from festivals, events and concert touring to
theatre productions, art installations, sporting events – including London 2012 and
the famous flying carpet for the 2015 European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan – fashion
shows, corporate and industrial launches and product experientials.
In this past 12 months WI devised the system to move Beyonce’s massive video
Monolith; engineered and delivered fully wirelessly operated, self-driving LED video
cubes – based on their ingenious laser guided wagon system for a pre-launch of the
brand new Peugeot 3008 SUV; and designed and supplied motion control,
customised staging and hardware / infrastructure for Russian singer and superstar
Philipp Kirkorov’s tour featuring spectacular show design by creative director,
Franco Dragone … amongst many others.
Having built a solid base and proving time and again that the seemingly impossible
can usually be achieved safely and spectacularly with a canny combination of
genius, lateral thinking and sometimes having the sheer balls …”We are ready for
the next step’ declares Willems enthusiastically!
That will include expanding the work more globally and pushing the brand and its
penchant for creative technical solutions to new highs.
