The third Zhubei Light Festival took place from February 8 to 23, 2025, at Zhubei Water-Channel Forest Park in Zhubei, Taiwan, with light installations, artworks, a market and live performances across the park at night. Zone Sound Creative, the art and technology studio founded by Taiwanese artist Po-Hao Chi, took part in two ways: with the installation Recurrent Pulse, and by co-planning talks and family workshops on the festival's last two days.
The installation
On the park's north path, light tubes are attached to tree trunks. The system listens to speech nearby and changes the color of the light according to the pitch and volume of the voice. A quiet voice produces a warm color that spreads slowly; a shout turns it bright blue. The flexible optical fibers are controlled through a grid of nodes, which produces continuous bands of color as well as jumps that follow the beat. Visitors talk on either side of the piece, and each exchange leaves its own trace of light along the trunks. Children sang to the trees and watched the light run through the branches, and adults tried different tones of voice to see how the light answered.
The brightness stays within a range that does not disturb nocturnal insects, so the stars remain visible. Recurrent Pulse was created by Po-Hao Chi, with Jong-Wei Chang and Kai-Lun Zheng as executive producers and Okome Studio as the curatorial team.
Talks on the lawn
On February 22 and 23, Zone Sound Creative co-planned two talks in a tent on the lawn, each given with a partner association. On the first day, an environmental sound artist from Taiwan's soundscape association asked the audience to listen with eyes closed for one minute, played the association's field recordings, and described a project in Taichung that replaced standard metro announcements with local ambient sound. On the second day, speakers from Taiwan's dark-sky association invited the audience to share experiences of darkness, led them in exploring the park through bodily perception, and asked whether the city's lighting could be improved.
Family workshops
Both afternoons, Zone Sound Creative educator Fifi Hu, who has long worked on technology art co-creation in rural areas, led workshops for children and parents. On the first day, families built interactive cards from batteries, LEDs and conductive paper; the finished cards were strung into a five-meter waterfall of light and hung along the water channel at dusk. On the second day they shaped clay mixed with fluorescent paint into flowers and checked each piece with a small flashlight, learning that light only needs to be bright enough.
Light and the night
The installation, talks and workshops shared one question: when technology shines light on nature, can it also show a more sustainable way of living with it? Several parents said afterward that they would check the lighting at home with their children and try softer light in the evening.
Chinese version: 融聲創意參與 2025 竹北光節《水生繁花》
Project page (in Chinese): 2025 竹北光節《迴響脈動》 Recurrent Pulse
