World of WearableArt - Technology Meets the Extraordinary
Client: World of WearableArt Ltd
Event: WOW Annual Show
Venue: TSB Arena, Wellington
Involvement: Multi-year contract from 2019 to present
The SHOW
World of WearableArt — known simply as WOW — is New Zealand's largest theatrical spectacle and one of the most visually ambitious live events in the Southern Hemisphere. Held annually at TSB Arena in Wellington, the show brings together the world's leading wearable art competition with high-voltage live performance, combining aerial choreography, original music, dance, and theatre into a production that regularly draws audiences from across New Zealand and around the world. In 2025, the event celebrated a milestone of one million tickets sold — a measure of the loyalty and passion it inspires in the people who return to it year after year.
Founded by Dame Suzie Moncrieff, WOW is built on a simple but extraordinary premise: to take art off the wall, adorn the body, and celebrate creativity on a stage that does full justice to the work. The production demands a technical delivery to match that ambition, and the bar is raised with every show.
WINNING THE CONTRACT
Streamliner Productions was awarded the WOW production contract in 2019, and the relationship has grown steadily from there. Being selected to deliver the video and communication systems for an event of this stature is not simply a matter of availability or price — it requires demonstrating a genuine capacity to elevate the experience. A key part of Streamliner's successful pitch was a commitment to significant investment in new technology: systems and infrastructure purpose-built to serve not just the production team, but the tens of thousands of audience members who fill TSB Arena across each season's run.
The TECHNOLOGY
The centrepiece of Streamliner's technical deployment at WOW is a large-format laser projection system driven by Disguise media servers. Up to 17 projectors can be in use across a single show, covering the stage floor, the upstage wall in its various configurations, and moving scenic elements above the stage. Every surface that the creative team imagines as a projection canvas becomes one — and with the modular, scene-by-scene flexibility that Disguise affords, the visual world of each show can shift completely from one moment to the next.
The scale of the projection rig is matched by the complexity it has to serve. WOW is not a static show. The stage changes shape, scenic elements move, and the visual environment has to respond in real time to what is happening in front of the audience. Disguise gives the Streamliner team the precision and reliability to manage that responsiveness across every performance.
Communications across a production of this size demand the same level of reliability. Streamliner deploys the Clearcom FreeSpeak 2 wireless beltpack system to keep the production team connected across the full arena footprint — crew on the stage, engineers at front of house, operators in the follow-spot positions, and everyone in between. In a show that moves fast and leaves no room for error, the quality and clarity of communication is as important as any piece of hardware on the rig.
In more recent years, the production has incorporated a growing number of LED panels into the stage design, complementing the projection system and expanding the visual vocabulary available to the creative team. The integration of LED and projection, managed through a unified Disguise workflow, has allowed WOW to push the boundaries of what the stage can do in ways that would have been considerably harder with either technology in isolation.
The RELATIONSHIP
Each WOW show has its own identity — its own title, its own themes, its own world — and while the core technology platform remains consistent, the specific configuration of projectors, panels, and scenic surfaces adapts from year to year to serve what the creative team is building. That ongoing flexibility requires a production partner who understands both the tools and the event deeply. Streamliner has now delivered multiple seasons of WOW, and that accumulated knowledge makes the collaboration better each time.
The show that the audience experiences is seamless. The backstage picture — the months of planning, the pre-season installation, the daily technical rehearsals, and the nightly reset that gets everything back to zero before the next audience walks in — is anything but simple. Streamliner takes care of that side of things so that WOW can keep its focus where it belongs: on the art, the performance, and the people who make the journey to Wellington to see it.
Streamliner Productions is a creative and technical production company based in New Zealand. Learn more about this project here https://www.worldofwearableart.com/
