The four lions of Trafalgar Square in London have lain dormant since their conception in 1867. They are 150-year-old silent British icons that have been stared at, photographed and posed next to by countless generations of visitors.

But there will soon be a fifth, a fluorescent red, machine-learning, poetry-spouting fifth lion that will not be as passive as its fellows. Created by the set designer Es Devlin OBE, Please Feed the Lions is an interactive sculpture to be installed as part of the 2018 London Design Festival from the 18th to the 23rd September.

Devlin, who has created sets for the likes of Kanye West, Louis Vuitton and the London 2012 Olympics, saw the silence of the existing lions as a cry for change. The title of the project comes from the often read signs in Trafalgar Square, reminding visitors to please not feed the pigeons.

Devlin worked with Ross Godwin, a Creative Technologist at Google, to design a poetry-creating algorithm that uses words chosen by the public and mixes them with the 25 million other words of poetry to generate a unique piece of work. The crowd-sourced, diverse poems will be formed from 19th century poetry and poems chosen by William Sieghart for his compilation, the Poetry Pharmacy. There will also be a screen next to the lion so members of the public can, as it were, feed the lion with words of their choosing.

In the daytime, the poetry will appear on a screen inside the lion’s mouth, but at night, the words will be projected over the lion and up Nelson’s Column. Devlin says of the work, “At a time when much of our public debate, especially about national identity, is prosaic and divisive, I want to make a work for this public space that is poetic and collective.”

Please Feed the Lions comes as a culmination of a yearlong collaboration between Devlin and Google’s Arts & Culture platform. After the festival, the interactive sculpture will be digitised as part of an online exhibition hosted on the platform.

Please Feed the Lions will be on display in Trafalgar Square for London Design Festival, from the 18th to the 23rd September. Visit the London Design Festival’s website to find out more.