The Body's Afterimage: Intra-Action and Biopolitics in Sensor Art

This paper examines how contemporary sensor-based artworks reshape the relationship between body, technology, and power through data translation and feedback. Focusing on works by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Shinseungback Kimyonghun, Vicente Manzano, and Coralie Vogelaar, it explores how biometric and affective signalssuch as heartbeat, emotion, and neural activityare transformed into aesthetic and perceptual experience. Drawing on Karen Barads intra-action, Donna Haraways cyborg theory, and Michel Foucaults biopolitics and governmentality, the paper proposes the concept of the body afterimage to describe a residual, datafied embodiment that persists within algorithmic systems. This concept highlights how the bodys digital traces continue to operate as both material and political agents beyond physical presence. Through this framework, sensor art is understood as a site where the pursuit of interactivity and self-knowledge intersects with mechanisms of quantification and control. The study argues that technological mediation generates hybrid forms of visibility and agency that are simultaneously emancipatory and disciplinary, revealing that contemporary subjectivity is increasingly defined through technologically mediated traces rather than corporeal presence.