Aqua Has Revolutionized Festival Production Using Water Holographics

This Is Aqua, is a company that helps revolutionize the concerts and festivals we attend so frequently. While most companies use fire or LED lights to bring a show to life, they use water to create 3D holographic experiences.

They have an amazing goal in mind and want to make the world a better place. With every ticket sold from an Aqua event, a months worth of clean water is donated to someone in need.

After first arriving to Imagine Festival I sat next to co-founder of Aqua, Patrick and his lovely co-workers Amanda and Scott. After discovering one of their interviews never showed up, I swooped in so I could learn more about the company that's not only taking our scene by storm but also making the world a better place.

iEDM: So what got you started with Aqua?
Patrick: Back at URI I was president of the URI surf club. I wanted to make the club cool so I decided to throw concerts. So I threw  a concert, it got rained out. Threw another concert, got rained again. Tried coming up with an idea for a concert that couldn't get rained out, so I came up with the idea to use water.

I started googling cool water effects and it came up with all this crazy stuff where you can create holographs with water. We tried coming up with a way to build it, take it on the road, and make it tour-able. Then during my senior year of college I got the #1 DJ's U.S tour, Hardwell.

iEDM: How did he hear about it and get on board with it?
Patrick: I just emailed him a bunch of times. I emailed him to do one show and then his agent came back to me wanting us to do the whole tour. Since then it’s just been this crazy learning curve.

iEDM: So Hardwell was the first one, did other artists just immediately want to jump on board with it after?
Patrick: Yeah, we did that one and then we did Tiesto. Then a couple with 3LAU. The Chainsmokers hired us recently. Now we’re really mission oriented. We’re trying to get the right fit where people aren’t just really excited about the production but also the philanthropic brand as a whole.

iEDM: Have you guys always been doing the philanthropy with that or is that newer?
Patrick: It’s a little newer. We always had the heart for it but we couldn’t find a way to implement it until this past Spring. So we started doing 1 ticket = 1 month. Where we started giving a month of clean water for each ticket purchased to one of our shows. So far we’ve raised 11 years of clean water for a school in Ghana right now.

So, about the global water crisis, one billion people suffer from it. It’s the number one killer for kids under 5 in the world. It kills more kids than HIV or anything else. 5,000 kids die every day, and it’s just so sad because they have walk miles and miles to get water and it ends up being dirty anyways. So our goal is to spread awareness and have people feel like they’re making an impact by coming to our shows. “You came to our show, you made a difference.”

iEDM: So what’s next?
Patrick: Our goal is to go to Africa around November. Basically right now we’re just trying to find more artists that believe in our missions and work with them. Go on tour with them and spread awareness.

We’re starting a student ambassador program to hit campuses. We’re growing our productions t the same time we’re trying to invent all these designs because there’s so many things that can be done that just haven’t been tapped into. We’re looking to partner with more festivals and artists to really bring the technology to a new level and the awareness and the impact to another level.

Make sure you keep an eye out for any Aqua events coming your way. Not only will you enjoy an amazing show with revolutionary effects, but you will be helping someone in need. It's a win - win situation in our book and you really can't lose.