WIcretions, a Belgium-based engineering and an automation specialist is supplying several custom moving elements for the current European tour by French rock singer and multi-instrumentalist Calogero.
The tour is produced by TS3, who returned to WI based on their previous success with the Mylene Farmer “Timeless’ tour, to deliver more imaginative, reliable and tourable engineering solutions for which the company is renowned. Calogero’s avant-garde lighting scheme designed by Dimitri Vassiliu is based around traditional lighting instruments and is more about using the direct and ambient light and darkness created by LED screens with content flowing through them. For this idea to work, a series of six LED panels were required, to move around the performance space, so they can act as light sources.
The six screens needed to track up and downstage and fly in and out as well as to rotate for full 3D motion. The screens needed to morph from landscape to portrait and move from fully horizontal to fully vertical and anything in between.
WI’s Koen Peters project managed, collaborating closely with the tour’s production manager Vincent Pitras and technical production manager, Claude Muller.
WI’s system makes the use of their Stacking Truss product complete with beam trolleys which initiate the upstage / downstage motion. Below this is a standard WI TP3 rotator and attached to that is a custom motion hoist box which contains four 250Kg motors plus control. Each hoist connects to one corner of the screen, and this combined with the rotator above and the tracking screen enabling all axes of movement to be activated.
The system controlled by a Kinesys Vector motion control system and WIcreations is also supplying an operator and two technicians for the tour. The WI trusses are designed to maximise headroom in any venue, whilst taking up just a third of the volume of standard full-strength truss. A 5,4-metre diameter circular LED screen made from the same 6mm product also needed to be flown and moved. Weighing 1 700 kg, this is flown on four double-reeved 500 kg motors also hung from the WI tracking truss, which enables it to travel from flat to vertical positions and track up and downstage.
In addition to this, the stage right and left lighting trusses are flown up and down from two motion hoists which is all part of the WI system fed into the same Vector control platform, containing around 40 show movement cues. As with all WI solutions, the system is optimised for quick and straightforward set-ups, de-rigs and truck packs.
All the kit was delivered in a series of custom designed and fabricated touring dollies for maximum convenience. The motion boxes containing the four hoists are dollies in their own right, while the screen sections pack down neatly to three per dolly, with two more holding the main sections of the circular screen.
