# Long Essay: Semi-Corporeal Avatar Aesthetics | Plasmatic Multitudes

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Long essay | Updated May 24, 2026

# Semi-Corporeal Avatar Aesthetics

 This long-form essay develops the argument behind Plasmatic Multitudes. It asks how
 bodies can soften, dissolve, glow, swarm, or become collective without losing the
 coherence needed for embodiment and trust.

## How to read this essay

 This is the longer argument behind the shorter
 [Mesmer Prism project page](https://mesmerprism.com/projects/plasmatic-multitudes.html). It
 develops the media genealogy, XR precedents, computational morphogenesis bridge,
 pain-translation question, and working design rules in more detail.

 For routes through the rest of the material, return to the
 [field guide hub](https://mesmerprism.com/plasmatic-multitudes/index.html).

## Why these bodies matter

 Somaesthetics is the lens that keeps this inquiry grounded. If embodied experience is
 the medium through which perception, action, and self-presentation happen, then avatar
 design is never only visual. It reorganizes the felt edge of the body: where the body
 begins, how it meets the world, and what kinds of relation become possible
 ([Shusterman](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/somaesthetics); [Hook et al.](https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2598561)) .

 Weakly bounded bodies matter because they let that edge soften without losing bodily
 coherence. Across animation theory, media history, XR design, and pain translation, the
 body can glow, diffuse, swarm, or become collective while still reading as a body when
 grouping cues, motion, and response remain strong enough to bind it
 ([Wagemans et al.](https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029333); [Johansson](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03212378); [dos Anjos and Pereira](https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02672); [Glowacki](https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1286950)) .

 Once representation changes conduct and self-perception, boundary softness stops being a
 mood and becomes a design variable. The relevant question is which boundary changes
 alter agency, trust, and social relation without collapsing into noise
 ([Yee and Bailenson](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00299.x); [Desnoyers-Stewart et al.](https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585843); [Glowacki et al.](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12637-z)) .

 This essay follows that claim across media history, XR precedent, pseudo-haptic
 materiality, computational morphogenesis, and pain translation. The through-line is
 intentionally narrow: bodies do not need sealed surfaces to be experientially real, but
 they do need coherence.

## How transformation stays legible

 The core problem can be stated simply: how far can a body transform without ceasing to
 be experienced as a body? The answer depends on scaffolding. Bodies can lose surface
 closure and still remain present when grouping cues, motion signatures, and recurrent
 structure continue to bind the image into something the viewer can inhabit or recognize
 ([Wagemans et al.](https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029333); [Johansson](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03212378); [Richards et al.](https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/2177/0000/Virtual-reality-and-virtual-bodies/10.1117/12.173894.full)) .

 That shifts the problem toward a more useful design rule: do not ask softness to do
 everything. Keep at least one stable carrier of identity, such as a motion signature,
 density core, rhythm, or contingent response pattern, so the body's periphery can blur
 without turning the whole figure into noise. Weakly bounded bodies are not a decorative
 exception to embodiment research. They are an alternative way of staging embodiment
 itself
 ([dos Anjos and Pereira](https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02672); [Reeves](https://doi.org/10.1145/357318.357320); [Reynolds](https://doi.org/10.1145/37402.37406); [Yee and Bailenson](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00299.x)) .

 This is also where the craft sources become unusually useful. Gilland's rule is that
 stylized effects stay believable when they follow observed forces, preserve an
 underlying energy, and fit the larger world around them. Bernal and Maes push a
 comparable point from social VR: expressive fur and particle avatars become relatable
 not by approaching ordinary anatomy but by making affect and mannerism legible through
 transformation
 ([Gilland 2009](https://archive.org/details/elemental-magic/page/n2/mode/1up); [Gilland 2012](https://archive.org/details/elemental-magic-volume-ii/mode/1up); [Bernal and Maes](https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3053207)) .

## Historical and conceptual lineage

 The most useful historical anchor remains the Eisenstein line around plasmaticness.
 There, changeable form is not treated as a gimmick but as a refusal of ossification: a
 body or figure can stretch, melt, assume another contour, and still retain the charge
 of living form. Abraham Geil helps connect that primary line to a contemporary
 vocabulary of unstable mimetic identity, while Kristen Whissel shows how digital crowds,
 morphs, and many-part bodies in later cinema become meaning-bearing structures rather
 than empty spectacle
 ([Eisenstein](https://seagullbooks.org/products/on-disney); [Geil](https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=813411); [Whissel](https://www.dukeupress.edu/spectacular-digital-effects)) .

 But that line does not begin with animation alone. Before cinema, phantasmagoria shows
 used magic lanterns, darkness, smoke, hidden apparatus, and moving projections to make
 ghosts enlarge, recede, and hover in shared space. Pepper's Ghost translated a related
 logic into reflective stage illusion, placing apparitions alongside live performers
 without giving them a solid body. What matters here is that weakly bounded bodies were
 historically staged as controllable optical events: bodies of light, reflection,
 concealment, and timed appearance rather than sealed anatomy
 ([Gunning](https://mediaarthistory.org/refresh/Programmatic%20key%20texts/pdfs/Gunning.pdf); [Owens](https://shop.tate.org.uk/the-ghost-a-cultural-history-paperback/22503.html); [Science Museum Group](https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co18245/phantasmagoria-magic-lantern-c-1820); [Royal Collection Trust](https://www.rct.uk/resources/peppers-ghost)) .

 Nineteenth-century spiritualism pushes that grammar further. Owens shows how the
 seance became a communication scene shaped by telegraphy, table-rapping, photography,
 and staged expectation, while Simone Natale traces how spirit photographs, stage
 exposures, magic-lantern entertainments, and superimposition effects feed directly into
 the visual logic of trick film and early cinema. In that history, ghost images keep
 wavering between evidence and spectacle, belief and demonstration, stillness and motion
 ([Owens](https://shop.tate.org.uk/the-ghost-a-cultural-history-paperback/22503.html); [Natale](https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2012.664745)) .

 Wilson adds the occult-modernist layer that matters most here. Her account of
 theosophy, subtle metamorphosis, and ectoplasm shows a repeated effort to render
 invisible feeling, vibration, and agency as colored clouds, radiating figures,
 extruded matter, and partially formed bodies. Besant and Leadbeater's
 Thought-Forms makes that image vocabulary especially explicit by treating
 thought and emotion as visible form built from color, rhythm, and subtle matter. The
 value of this source line lies in its historical picture-language for bodies that emanate,
 protrude, veil, or cohere without hard closure
 ([Wilson](https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748627691.001.0001); [Besant and Leadbeater](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16269/16269-h/16269-h.htm)) .

 Popular science-fiction television carries the same problem into a mass-media design
 vocabulary. Star Trek 's transporter made body-to-energy conversion into a
 repeatable visual grammar of glitter, dissolve, and rematerialization, while the
 franchise's non-corporeal species archive gathered a broader family of clouds, energy
 beings, host-dependent presences, and patterned light forms. The Zetarians are the
 clearest fit for semi-corporeal body design: a once-corporeal population continuing as a pattern of
 lights and non-corporeal energy, seeking a compatible humanoid body through which to
 live again. Together, these examples make a useful mainstream archive of
 semi-corporeal body design
 ([ASC Staff](https://web.archive.org/web/20260309174521/https://theasc.com/articles/star-trek-50-part-i-original-series-effects); [Memory Alpha](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Non-corporeal_lifeform); [Memory Alpha Zetarian](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Zetarian)) .

 The wider cluster is worth keeping distinct. The Douwd add disguise, false
 surroundings, and luminous humanoid dematerialization. Onaya contributes the
 flowing-and-diaphanous seducer who crosses between corporeal and energetic form.
 Ronin adds a host-dependent mist that needs an external anchor for cohesion. The
 Pahvans contribute clouds of glowing blue particles that are inseparable from the
 larger environment, while the Companion offers a gaseous yellow-orange-red cloud whose
 relation to the humanoid is intimate rather than merely spectral. Taken together, they
 show several different mainstream solutions to semi-corporeality: shimmer,
 humanoid-light, swarm, mist, ambient particle field, and sentient cloud
 ([Douwd](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Douwd); [Onaya](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Onaya); [Ronin](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ronin); [Pahvan](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Pahvan); [Companion](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Companion)) .

 Set beside Bukatman and Whissel, that broader media history stops spectral language
 from collapsing into a vague mood word. Apparition, ectoplasm, thought-form, swarm,
 and digital multitude each name different ways a body can become active, relational,
 and materially persuasive without returning to a fixed shell
 ([Bukatman](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Poetics_of_Slumberland.html?id=wi8NYAAACAAJ); [Whissel](https://www.dukeupress.edu/spectacular-digital-effects); [Wilson](https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748627691.001.0001); [Owens](https://shop.tate.org.uk/the-ghost-a-cultural-history-paperback/22503.html)) .

 What makes this lineage especially useful for current design is that it never really
 separates appearance from staging. Across phantasmagoria, seance, trick film,
 theosophical diagrams, and XR, transformation works through movement, phase changes,
 threshold crossings, and relation. That historical repertoire gives contemporary design a
 language for non-solid bodies that are active, expressive, and legible
 instead of merely decorative
 ([Gunning](https://mediaarthistory.org/refresh/Programmatic%20key%20texts/pdfs/Gunning.pdf); [Wilson](https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748627691.001.0001); [Liedgren et al.](https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1043170)) .

## Contemporary XR precedents

 XR research makes this body logic testable. Richards and colleagues already showed that
 presence can be built through spectral embodiment. dos Anjos and Pereira make the
 question even clearer in
 contemporary terms by treating abstraction, mesh representation, and point-cloud
 representation as explicit avatar variables in their own right
 ([Richards et al.](https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/2177/0000/Virtual-reality-and-virtual-bodies/10.1117/12.173894.full); [dos Anjos and Pereira](https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02672)) .

 Danceroom Spectroscopy bridges that XR line by turning physics
 simulation into an embodied encounter rather than a background effect. The participant
 does not step into a sealed character shell so much as into a responsive field of
 particles, forces, and feedback. That matters here because it shows that bodily
 intelligibility can be carried by physically legible interaction before it is carried by
 anatomical likeness. Set beside the older optical line, it also reads as an updated way
 of making invisible forces visible and socially graspable
 ([Mitchell et al.](https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_00924); [Gunning](https://mediaarthistory.org/refresh/Programmatic%20key%20texts/pdfs/Gunning.pdf); [Besant and Leadbeater](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16269/16269-h/16269-h.htm)) .

 The Desnoyers-Stewart sequence makes the particle-body line especially concrete.
 Transcending Projection begins with point clouds and particle emission tied to
 mirror identification in shared space. Transcending the Virtual Mirror Stage
 argues more directly that mixed-reality mirrors can make radically abstract bodies feel
 ownable. Body RemiXer turns that logic toward intercorporeality through
 particle auras, touch exchange, and abstract body swapping, while Star-Stuff
 carries it into constellation bodies that connect strangers through cosmic form
 ([Desnoyers-Stewart](https://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/socialHMD/SHMD_19_submissions/SHMD_19_paper_12.pdf); [Desnoyers-Stewart, Smith, and Riecke](https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/31046/7/31046%20PAPADAKI_DRHA2019_Conference_Proceedings_2020.pdf); [Desnoyers-Stewart et al. 2020](https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_01925); [Desnoyers-Stewart 2022](https://www.isea-symposium-archives.org/presentation/star-stuff-a-shared-immersive-experience-in-space-presented-by-desnoyers-stewart/)) .

 The more recent XR cluster sharpens that general point into several distinct
 precedents. Glowacki's Isness work shows how luminous, weakly representational bodies
 can be staged as intentional experiences of connectedness, coalescence, and altered
 self-other relation rather than as visual novelties. Desnoyers-Stewart's ETC gives a
 different but complementary answer: abstract aura-like bodies can become interaction
 grammars for touch, timing, and felt social relation at a distance
 ([Glowacki et al.](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12637-z); [Glowacki](https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1286950); [Desnoyers-Stewart et al.](https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585843)) .

 The pseudo-haptics literature clarifies why these weakly bounded forms can still feel
 materially persuasive. Lecuyer surveys how vision can induce impressions of stiffness,
 friction, texture, and resistance; Pusch and Lecuyer turn that into practical design
 guidance; Collins and Kapralos show how cross-modal cueing, including sound, can support
 the same effect. Even the recent molecular-bond-stiffness work is useful here: people can
 judge different bond rigidities in VR through simulated response alone. Believable
 materiality can ride coherent physics and sensory alignment without requiring
 skin-like rendering or dedicated haptic hardware
 ([Lecuyer](https://doi.org/10.1162/pres.18.1.39); [Pusch and Lecuyer](https://doi.org/10.1145/2070481.2070494); [Collins and Kapralos](https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2019.1619318); [Roebuck Williams et al.](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-71707-9_13)) .

 Bernal and Maes widen the XR picture further by showing that expressive, nonhuman avatar
 forms can become socially legible through transformed figure languages. Their fur shells
 and particle systems are driven by physiological and affective change, which matters here
 because it suggests a wider principle: coherence can be maintained through responsive
 transformation and not left to surface likeness alone
 ([Bernal and Maes](https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3053207)) .

 Liedgren, Desmet, and Gaggioli supply the final part of the XR picture. They remind us
 that transition, framing, invitation, and return are central design materials in their
 own right. Semi-corporeal form often works through staging as much as depiction. The
 body appears different because it is introduced, stabilized, and interpreted as a
 different mode of being there
 ([Liedgren et al.](https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1043170)) .

## Computational morphogenesis

 The particle line now has a newer computational bridge. Particle systems gave fuzzy,
 temporally evolving form; flocking showed how local rules can make collective motion
 cohere. DiffeoMorph extends that lineage into learned morphogenesis: a population of
 agents shares an update rule, receives signals from other agents, and learns to move
 toward target 3D shapes through differentiable simulation
 ([Reeves](https://doi.org/10.1145/357318.357320); [Reynolds](https://doi.org/10.1145/37402.37406); [Pahng et al.](https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17129)) .

 The technical detail matters because it changes what "multitude" can mean. In the
 DiffeoMorph paper, shape is not treated as a finished mesh with particles attached to
 it. Form emerges from many agents, an SE(3)-equivariant force model, and a
 Zernike-spectrum loss that compares predicted and target shapes as continuous spatial
 distributions rather than as fixed point lists
 ([Pahng et al.](https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17129); [hormoz-lab](https://github.com/hormoz-lab/diffeomorph)) .

 For Plasmatic Multitudes, this is a design translation, not an embodiment result.
 DiffeoMorph does not show that a person will own, trust, or feel such a form as a body.
 It does give a concrete way to think about weakly bounded bodies as dynamics: local
 rules, signals, target tendencies, and coherence over time, rather than a static surface
 style.

## Why the pain track belongs here

 The pain track gives the broader theory its sharpest experimental edge.
 Jennifer Bullington reframes psychosomatic difficulty not as a narrow body malfunction
 but as a disturbance in the dialogue between body, person, and world. That matters here
 because it turns avatar form from a cosmetic issue into a way of reworking lived
 body-world meaning
 ([Bullington](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6498-9)) .

 The existing avatar-pain literature already supports a modest but important claim:
 changing embodied visual form can affect pain thresholds, pain ratings, and body
 perception disturbance. Ho, Lewis, Martini, and Solca all show that therapeutic or
 analgesic consequences can arise through altered embodiment, multisensory modulation, or
 changes in the visual organization of the body
 ([Ho et al.](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2021.10.009); [Lewis et al.](https://doi.org/10.1002/ejp.1766); [Martini et al.](https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00438); [Solca et al.](https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000005905)) .

 Once those findings are placed beside the semi-corporeal archive, a stronger research
 question opens up. Instead of changing only size, color, or texture, what happens if
 boundary precision, permeability, protective haloing, or distributed body form become
 the manipulated variables? ETC and Isness matter here not because they are pain studies,
 but because they show how abstract bodies can remain relationally and experientially
 operative. Gilland and Bernal matter because they show how such transformations can stay
 believable and relatable rather than dissolving into arbitrary visual novelty
 ([Desnoyers-Stewart et al.](https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585843); [Glowacki](https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1286950); [Gilland 2009](https://archive.org/details/elemental-magic/page/n2/mode/1up); [Bernal and Maes](https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3053207)) .

 Tactile visualization adds a useful measurement bridge: sensation can be externalized
 in terms of location, spread, intensity, rhythm, and texture-like quality instead of
 being reduced to a single pain number. For boundary-softened avatars, that means
 boundary change can be compared alongside changes in how sensation is mapped and
 described
 ([Volpato et al.](https://qri.org/blog/visualizing-tactile-sensations)) .

## Working design rules

 The longform argument produces a fairly compact set of design rules. The
 first is that stable centers matter. A body can become diffuse without becoming
 unreadable if some anchors remain steady enough for grouping and re-identification.
 Recognizable cores, rhythms, or movement signatures can hold identity while the
 periphery blurs, splits, or swarms
 ([Wagemans et al.](https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029333); [Johansson](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03212378)) .

 The second is that permeability should be stateful. Semi-corporeality works best as a
 changing condition rather than a static look. Bodies gather, disperse, overlap, merge,
 and re-individuate. Treating permeability as a state machine instead of a shader choice
 aligns this line of work with the plasmatic historical line, the logic of distributed
 simulation
 ([Eisenstein](https://seagullbooks.org/products/on-disney); [Reeves](https://doi.org/10.1145/357318.357320); [Reynolds](https://doi.org/10.1145/37402.37406); [Pahng et al.](https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17129)) .

 The third is that stylization still needs a physical scaffold. Gilland's point is that
 even highly stylized change becomes believable when it follows observed forces and
 preserves a coherent underlying energy. That is exactly the right rule for these
 bodies. The goal is to make the transformation itself intelligible. The same rule helps
 explain later pseudo-haptic and physics-based XR work: softness, drag, or resistance
 become believable when the system behaves like a coherent material world instead of an
 arbitrary effect layer
 ([Gilland 2009](https://archive.org/details/elemental-magic/page/n2/mode/1up); [Gilland 2012](https://archive.org/details/elemental-magic-volume-ii/mode/1up); [Lecuyer](https://doi.org/10.1162/pres.18.1.39); [Pusch and Lecuyer](https://doi.org/10.1145/2070481.2070494)) .

 The fourth is that relation changes everything. Semi-corporeal bodies become most
 interesting when they mediate contact, coalescence, or social signaling rather than
 standing alone as self-contained art objects. ETC, Isness, and even Bernal's
 expressive-avatar experiments matter more here than generic VFX spectacle
 ([Desnoyers-Stewart et al.](https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585843); [Glowacki et al.](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12637-z); [Bernal and Maes](https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3053207)) .

 The fifth is that framing cannot be separated from form. Bodies do not mean the same
 thing in every setting. Whether a transformation reads as aura, apparition, protective
 field, swarm, or cartoon elasticity depends on pacing, invitation, symbolic register,
 and scene logic. The media-theory sources and the transition-design sources therefore
 sit side by side in this argument
 ([Wilson](https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748627691.001.0001); [Bukatman](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Poetics_of_Slumberland.html?id=wi8NYAAACAAJ); [Owens](https://shop.tate.org.uk/the-ghost-a-cultural-history-paperback/22503.html); [Liedgren et al.](https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1043170)) .

## How the argument holds together

 Somaesthetics holds these materials together by tracking how designed forms reorganize
 lived bodily experience, especially at the boundary where self meets world and others
 ([Shusterman](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/somaesthetics); [Hook et al.](https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2598561)) .

 Media history supplies a repertoire of boundary operations, perception research explains
 how coherence survives without sealed surfaces, XR work shows that abstract bodies can
 still be owned and socially meaningful, computational morphogenesis shows how many-part
 form can be organized as dynamics, and pain studies make the stakes experimentally
 sharp. That is the common line linking Gilland's physical logic of transformation,
 pseudo-haptics, Danceroom's physics-based interaction, DiffeoMorph's agent-based
 morphogenesis, ETC's aura-touch grammar, and Isness's collective light bodies
 ([Gilland 2009](https://archive.org/details/elemental-magic/page/n2/mode/1up); [Wagemans et al.](https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029333); [Lecuyer](https://doi.org/10.1162/pres.18.1.39); [Mitchell et al.](https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_00924); [Pahng et al.](https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17129); [Desnoyers-Stewart et al.](https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585843); [Glowacki](https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1286950); [Ho et al.](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2021.10.009)) .

 Read together, these essays move from broad theory to intervention design while the
 sources page keeps the citation trail legible.

 Plasmatic multitudes name bodies that remain legible while becoming more permeable,
 more collective, and more transformable than the default avatar shell usually allows.

## Sources

 For shared vocabulary, see the [vocabulary page](https://mesmerprism.com/plasmatic-multitudes/terminology.html). All
 cited works are listed on the [sources page](https://mesmerprism.com/plasmatic-multitudes/references.html), organized by
 genealogy, foundations, XR, and pain translation.

 Further reading: [field guide hub](https://mesmerprism.com/plasmatic-multitudes/index.html) and
 [somaesthetics note](https://mesmerprism.com/plasmatic-multitudes/background/somaesthetics.html).