Affective surveillance, bio-political governance, and CORPOREA’s postdigital interactive exhibits: a bio-semiotic forensic analysis

Abstract In this study, we reconfigure the role of interactive exhibits in fourth-generation science museums through an expanded Discourse Analysis and Digital Surveillance (DADS) framework, informed by bio-semiotics. Analyzing CORPOREA, Europe’s first large-scale museum dedicated to the human body, we argue that immersive technologies, augmented reality, biometric feedback, and gamified diagnostics transform participatory learning into affectively charged surveillance. By reframing DADS’ five processes ( participation , pretexting , entextualization , recontextualization , and inferencing ), we expose how visitors’ bodily rhythms are entrained, affectively scaffolded, and datafied within closed semiotic loops. Remarkably, through the triadic integration of intersemiosis, enactive signs, and cognitive artifacts, CORPOREA’s interactive exhibits mediate epistemic closure and bio-political governance, masking algorithmic control beneath the veneer of personalization and empowerment. Through intersemiotic compression and rhythmical synchronization, visitor engagement is converted into predictive profiling, epistemic authority, and infrastructural capture. Arguably, what appears as democratized science communication is, in fact, a postdigital surveillance dispositif that sutures visitors into a surveillance ecology while scripting consent through design. This study contributes to emerging scholarship on affective surveillance, postdigital pedagogy, informal science education, and museology.