Feed the Lion on Trafalgar Square between 18 - 23 September, and hear it roar with an ever-evolving collective poem.
Cast in 1867, the four monumental lions in Trafalgar Square have been sitting as silent British icons at the base of Nelson’s Column for the past 150 years. On Tuesday 18 September, a fifth red lion joined the pride. This new lion is not be silent: it roars poetry, and the words it roars are chosen by the public. Everyone is invited to “feed the lion”, but this lion only eats words.
The poem is generated by an algorithm trained on 19th century poetry, and is projection-mapped over the lion and onto Nelson’s Column itself: a beacon of streaming text that invites others to join in and add their voice.
Please Feed the Lions follows a year-long collaboration between Es Devlin and
Google Arts & Culture. Exploring the parameters of design and artificial intelligence, the installation incorporates a deep learning algorithm developed by Ross Goodwin, creative technologist at Google.
