Please Feed the Lions – Es Devlin x Google Arts & Culture

Project Overview:

For London Design Festival 2018, we were proud to support renowned artist Es Devlin, delivering critical system integration and user interface design for her interactive installation, Please Feed the Lions — a poetic, AI-powered public sculpture in Trafalgar Square, commissioned by Google Arts & Culture.

Client:

London Design Festival

Project Lead:

Date:

September 20218

Location:

Trafalgar Square, London

Project Overview

Objectives:

To develop a live, interactive system that would allow members of the public to feed words into a digital sculpture, with AI-generated poetry projected in real time onto Nelson’s Column and one of Trafalgar Square’s iconic bronze lions.

Brief:

LUX was brought in to integrate the complex technical systems behind Please Feed the Lions. This included designing the user interface for public interaction, ensuring the reliable transfer of text to Ross Goodwin’s poetry algorithm, and returning the generated content for live projection by Luke Halls Studio — all while managing system networking, infrastructure, and real-time data publishing for Google Arts & Culture.

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Project Fulfilment

Conceptual Design:

Working closely with Es Devlin and project partners, we helped shape the user experience — creating an interface that was intuitive, inviting, and capable of processing thousands of unique word donations from the public across the installation’s run.

Technical Design:

We engineered a system architecture that could handle real-time data exchange across multiple inputs and outputs. This involved integrating the public input system with the AI algorithm by Ross Goodwin, formatting and preparing the returned couplets, and preparing projection-friendly outputs for Luke Halls Studio’s visual display.

Project Management:

Coordination was key. Our team acted as a technical bridge between artist, AI, and visual production — managing timelines, stakeholder input, and iterative testing ahead of public launch. We also worked closely with the London Design Festival and Google Arts & Culture teams to ensure compliance, security, and user privacy.

Installation & Build:

On-site, we delivered a robust and resilient network to support the installation’s continuous performance in a high-traffic, outdoor environment. Our team provided infrastructure setup and ongoing support, ensuring seamless integration between all systems throughout the event.

Event Delivery:

The installation ran smoothly throughout the festival, delivering thousands of unique poetic responses in real-time. The final cumulative poetry output was published live by Google Arts & Culture — creating a lasting digital record of collective creativity.

Technical Insight

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