London Design Festival and Google Arts & Culture:
- Es Devlin’s “Please Feed The Lions”
Please Feed The Lions was an interactive sculpture in Trafalgar Square by multidisciplinary artist and designer Es Devlin, who has become known for her innovative projection-mapped sculptures that fuse light, music, and technology. The project followed a year-long collaboration between 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.
The Brief
Es Devlin approached us to design and implement system integration for Please Feed The Lions, controlling the associated technologies. In addition, we were also tasked with building an intuitive user interface and installing a screen within the Lion’s mouth.
We had to first consider the user experience, interacting with the installation, then the communication between Ross Goodwin’s algorithm, for which we would need to provide the server computer, the projection, designed by Luke Halls and the playback of Audio composed by Res.Lab.
London Design Festival also asked us to look after elements of the site infrastructure, to manage the power distribution, networking and cable ramps, which needed to be ADA Compliant.
| Client: | Google Arts & Culture |
|---|---|
| Project Name: | Please Feed The Lions |
| Venue: | Trafalgar Square, London |
| Date: | |
| Project Lead: | |
| Technical Lead: | LUX Technical |
| LUX Deliverables: | |
| External Link: |
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What we Did
The System Integration
With an understanding of the requirements for each of the different teams, we designed a system that could communicate in the relevant computer languages, send and request appropriate commands and information as it was required. Providing feedback for the user throughout the experience.
Our solution included; a computer built specifically for Ross Goodwin on which he programmed and ran his algorithm, a LUX media server running touchdesigner with a failover server, a screen for the lion’s mouth and all the associated networking equipment and switch gear.
The User Interface
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