Rhythmic Entanglements is a project developed by Taiwanese artist Po-Hao Chi during the artist-in-residence program at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (Arts@ITRI). It was supported by the Ministry of Culture's Technology Art Innovation Experimental Program: Matchmaking for Artists and Research Institutions. Starting from the body, the project explores how breathing, grip strength and upper-limb movement can be translated into sound. Sound becomes more than a response to movement: it is also a way to understand one's own state and to notice the rhythms of others.
Working with the lab
Chi began the residency at ITRI in Hsinchu in November 2025, working with the Music and Motion Interactive Health Promotion Lab at ITRI. The team tested sensors for breathing, pulse, muscle activity and movement, built prototypes, and then focused on hand movement and grip, which place less burden on the wearer.
The central device is the Synchronous Movement Vehicle, an upper-limb rehabilitation device made by Rehabotics. The ITRI lab added motion tracking and data logging, and the project team adapted it into an interactive instrument. Through pushing, pulling and gripping, participants make music and hear how physiological signals become sound. When two people operate it together, differences in strength, coordination and rhythm become audible. The project also includes Rhythmic Vape, an installation activated by breath: a participant's breathing draws visual traces on a virtual turntable, which in turn generate melody, rhythm and sound.
Starting from the hand
On March 12, 2026, the team held a workshop with older adults at the Tamsui Yishan Public Senior Day Care Center in New Taipei City. Participants traced the outlines of their own hands and shared memories of what their hands had done over a lifetime, and the team tested the device with them and gathered their responses to its operation and sound. These accounts do not fully register in sensor data, which led the team to treat sound as a way of connecting different bodily experiences and life stories, not only as a display of measurements. The team also produced a booklet explaining how the sensors work and how physiological data is measured.
Lecture-performance
On October 15, 2026, the project was presented at the 2026 Future Art & Technology Salon at the Performing Arts Hall of the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, as a lecture-performance with an exhibition. Chi worked with Möbius Strip Theatre, who invited older adults with no stage experience to share their stories and join rehearsals. The performance combined the Synchronous Movement Vehicle, live sound, real-time visuals and spoken narration, and took the hand as its starting point, from a baby's first grasp to changes in grip and touch later in life. Rehabilitation movements became a way to call up memory, so that the body is not only something to be measured and corrected.
Context
Rhythmic Entanglements follows Chi's earlier work on aural diversity and music in later life. Chi is the founder of Zone Sound Creative, a studio that works across sound, art, science and technology with a focus on aural diversity and inclusive practice.
Chinese version: 《節奏繞纏》紀柏豪 × 工研院藝術進駐
Project page (in Chinese): 《節奏繞纏》 Rhythmic Entanglements
