LOOP Brings Beijing The Soundtrack of Their Commute via Twilio

LOOP Brings Beijing The Soundtrack of Their Commute via Twilio

LOOP is exactly what it sounds like – a feedback loop that Xiaowei R. Wang and Ian Pearce designed as part of Beijing Design Week 2014. LOOP’s goal is to make Beijing commuters bus ride more than just a commute. A commuters bus route becomes an automotive art gallery that gives as much as you put into it. With 996 buses serving the 20 million people that live in the Beijing metropolitan area, there is no limit to potential galleries and potential contributors.

Commuters can listen to the soundtrack of their bus route as interpreted by local Beijing artists. LOOP commissioned several different bands to create soundscapes inspired by the bus. But, you don’t have to be in a band to contribute. Using Twilio, LOOP enables every commuter to add their voice, song, poetry or sound to their buses playlist.

LOOP uses Twilio Voice where users easily record and contribute an audio sample to their bus’s LOOP soundtrack by simply calling a Twilio powered number. Eliminating the barrier to contribution is key to LOOP’s mission of having a democratic, open source art exhibit on the bus. Anyone and everyone can easily contribute to the project without having to download an app, or use a smartphone.

Ian Pearce built LOOP using simple Twilio XML commands, Twilio Record, and a Sinatra server. The whole thing was up and running in just a few hours. Now that LOOP launched a few weeks ago Xiaowei and Ian are looking forward to the new pieces commuter-turned-artists will submit.

Learn more about LOOP here.