# Plasmatic Multitudes - Weakly Bounded Embodiment and Semi-Corporeal Avatar Design Source: https://mesmerprism.com/projects/plasmatic-multitudes.html Canonical HTML: https://mesmerprism.com/projects/plasmatic-multitudes.html Generated: 2026-05-26 Description: A public overview of weakly bounded bodies: avatars, swarms, auras, particle forms, and luminous bodies that soften while remaining coherent enough for embodiment, relation, and cautious research translation. Markdown: https://mesmerprism.com/projects/plasmatic-multitudes.md Plain text: https://mesmerprism.com/projects/plasmatic-multitudes.txt BibTeX references: https://mesmerprism.com/projects/plasmatic-multitudes.bib CSL JSON references: https://mesmerprism.com/projects/plasmatic-multitudes.references.csl.json --- Weakly bounded embodiment # Plasmatic Multitudes Plasmatic Multitudes asks how far a body can become luminous, porous, collective, particulate, ghostly, or otherwise weakly bounded while still being experienced as a body. The answer is not to make an avatar look ethereal. A body can soften without disappearing when perception can still group it, motion can still bind it, and interaction can still make it feel responsive ([Wagemans et al., 2012](https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029333); [Johansson, 1973](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03212378); [Lecuyer, 2009](https://doi.org/10.1162/pres.18.1.39)). The project treats semi-corporeal bodies as perceptual, social, aesthetic, and cautious pain-translation design objects: bodies whose coherence, motion, multisensory coupling, body ownership, and cultural legibility let them soften without collapsing into formlessness. This page gives the public overview. The field guide collects the long essay, method note, pain-translation hypothesis, vocabulary, and annotated sources. [Start with the basics](https://mesmerprism.com/projects/plasmatic-multitudes.html#field-guide) [XR embodiment](https://mesmerprism.com/projects/plasmatic-multitudes.html#xr) [Media genealogy](https://mesmerprism.com/projects/plasmatic-multitudes.html#genealogy) [Design translation](https://mesmerprism.com/projects/plasmatic-multitudes.html#design-translation) [Deep field guide](https://mesmerprism.com/plasmatic-multitudes/) [References](https://mesmerprism.com/projects/plasmatic-multitudes.html#references) [Back to work](https://mesmerprism.com/#work) Field guide ## What is a weakly bounded body? A weakly bounded body is a body whose edge is not sealed. It may appear as a cloud, swarm, point cloud, aura, shimmer, field, spectral trace, protective halo, or cluster of particles. It may merge with another body, expand into an environment, or flicker between figure and atmosphere. It is not formless. It keeps enough structure for someone to locate, address, inhabit, or respond to it ([Reeves, 1983](https://doi.org/10.1145/357318.357320); [Reynolds, 1987](https://doi.org/10.1145/37402.37406)). This changes the usual avatar question. Instead of asking whether a virtual body looks realistic, Plasmatic Multitudes asks what cues let a body remain bodily when realism is reduced: common motion, stable centers, contour fragments, rhythmic response, body ownership cues, pseudo-haptic resistance, and social framing. Realism can help, but it is only one route to embodiment ([dos Anjos and Pereira, 2024](https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02672); [Yee and Bailenson, 2007](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00299.x)). The lived body keeps the problem concrete. Somaesthetics is useful here because it treats embodiment as the medium of perception, action, and self-presentation, not as a picture added after the fact. If the body's edge is changed, the design question becomes what happens to agency, trust, relation, and felt meaning ([Shusterman](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/somaesthetics); [Hook et al., 2015](https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2598561)). ### Design rules - Keep at least one stable identity carrier. - Let the edge change state: gather, diffuse, overlap, return. - Make softness legible through motion, resistance, rhythm, or response. - Treat relation as material: touch, distance, coalescence, consent, repair. - Do not claim therapeutic value until boundary precision has been tested directly. ### Body forms in scope - Particle bodies, point clouds, aura avatars, swarms, and field bodies - Luminous bodies, spectral bodies, mist bodies, and projected apparitions - Collective bodies that cohere through common fate rather than a single shell - Protective halos or soft buffers used as cautious pain-related hypotheses ### Compact method Plasmatic Multitudes treats the body's edge as a design variable. Boundary precision can change, but coherence must remain strong enough for ownership, agency, relation, and many-part form. ### Clinical boundary Plasmatic Multitudes does not claim that soft-edged avatars treat pain. It proposes boundary precision, protective fields, and avatar materiality as variables worth testing where body representation already matters. ### What is out of scope - Generic mystical or occult claims - Loose quantum language without a real material or optical bridge - Claims that soft avatars are automatically better than realistic ones - Claims that semi-corporeal avatars are proven pain treatments Perceptual coherence ## A body can loosen without becoming noise The core design problem is not softness. It is coherence after softness begins. ### Grouping does real work Gestalt grouping and figure-ground organization explain why fragments can gather into a single perceived form. A swarm of points, a field of particles, or a luminous outline can still become one body if its parts share motion, rhythm, proximity, contour, or response. Johansson's point-light work adds the bodily version of the same argument: sparse moving points can be enough to produce a compelling sense of human motion ([Wagemans et al., 2012](https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029333); [Johansson, 1973](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03212378)). That is why a semi-corporeal body needs anchors. A density core, hand position, gaze direction, gait rhythm, breathing pulse, or touch response can carry identity while the periphery diffuses. The design rule is simple: keep enough stable structure for recognition, then let the boundary become negotiable. ### Particles and swarms are not just decoration Particle systems were introduced as a way to model fuzzy, dynamic objects such as fire, clouds, and water. Flocking models showed that coherent collective motion can emerge from many locally acting agents. Together they give Plasmatic Multitudes a computational vocabulary for bodies that are volumetric, temporal, and many-part rather than closed mesh surfaces ([Reeves, 1983](https://doi.org/10.1145/357318.357320); [Reynolds, 1987](https://doi.org/10.1145/37402.37406)). A swarm body can make coordination visible. It can show how a body belongs to many elements, many signals, or many people at once. That social use still needs care: shared bodies have to make contribution, consent, visibility, and repair legible rather than simply replacing one rigid interface with a prettier one ([Wobbrock et al., 2011](https://kgajos.seas.harvard.edu/papers/wobbrock11abd.pdf); [Bennett et al., 2018](https://doi.org/10.1145/3234695.3236348)). XR embodiment ## Embodiment beyond the mesh XR research makes weak body form testable. Early spectral-body work showed that presence could be built around an unrealistic virtual body, and more recent studies compare abstract, mesh-based, and point-cloud avatars as distinct representation conditions ([Richards et al., 1994](https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/2177/0000/Virtual-reality-and-virtual-bodies/10.1117/12.173894.full); [dos Anjos and Pereira, 2024](https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02672)). The Proteus effect adds the behavioral stakes: transformed self-representation can feed back into how people act ([Yee and Bailenson, 2007](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00299.x)). The most useful contemporary precedents are not generic "abstract avatars." They are systems in which weak representation carries relation. Desnoyers-Stewart's work moves through point clouds, particle bodies, body swapping, constellation bodies, and aura-like social touch. Glowacki's Isness line uses diffuse light-energy bodies and coalescence as part of a guided design language for connectedness and self-boundary softening ([Desnoyers-Stewart et al., 2020](https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_01925); [Desnoyers-Stewart et al., 2023](https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585843); [Glowacki et al., 2022](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12637-z); [Glowacki, 2024](https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1286950)). Pseudo-haptics explains why such bodies can feel materially persuasive even without dedicated force feedback. Vision and cross-modal cueing can induce impressions of stiffness, friction, texture, mass, and resistance, so an aura, halo, or particle body can be designed to feel yielding, viscous, heavy, buffered, or responsive if its behavior is coherent enough ([Lecuyer, 2009](https://doi.org/10.1162/pres.18.1.39); [Pusch and Lecuyer, 2011](https://doi.org/10.1145/2070481.2070494); [Collins and Kapralos, 2019](https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2019.1619318)). ### Design variables - Boundary precision: hard edge, gradient edge, field, swarm - Coherence: common fate, rhythm, density core, response pattern - Material inference: drag, viscosity, stiffness, yielding, resistance - Relation: coalescence, touch metaphor, interpersonal timing, return ### Useful caution A body can be weakly represented without being weakly designed. Softness needs timing, feedback, and a clear reason to exist. Media genealogy ## Plasmatic, spectral, luminous Weak bodies have a long media history: animation, optical apparatus, spirit media, projection, smoke, and digital effects all learned ways to stage partial bodies. ### Plasmaticness is changeability, not mysticism Sergei Eisenstein's writing on Disney gives the project its word "plasmatic." The useful point is not a vague celebration of fluidity. It is the refusal of once-and-for-allotted form: animated figures can stretch, melt, become animal, object, ghost, or force, and still retain the charge of living form. Abraham Geil gives a compact contemporary bridge into that argument, while Kristen Whissel shows how morphs, crowds, swarms, and digital multitudes can carry narrative and symbolic work rather than remaining empty spectacle ([Eisenstein, 2017](https://seagullbooks.org/products/on-disney); [Geil, 2019](https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=813411); [Whissel, 2014](https://www.dukeupress.edu/spectacular-digital-effects)). ### Spectral bodies are apparatus bodies Ghostly bodies belong here as media history. Phantasmagoria, Pepper's Ghost, spirit photography, superimposition, and seance culture all staged bodies through darkness, reflection, smoke, projection, expectation, and hidden apparatus. They were techniques for making partial bodies appear, disappear, hover, enlarge, and share space with viewers ([Gunning, 2004](https://mediaarthistory.org/refresh/Programmatic%20key%20texts/pdfs/Gunning.pdf); [Natale, 2012](https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2012.664745); [Owens, 2017](https://shop.tate.org.uk/the-ghost-a-cultural-history-paperback/22503.html)). Leigh Wilson's work on modernism and magic sharpens the material side of that history. Ectoplasm, subtle bodies, and thought-forms offered picture languages for extrusion, colored radiance, partial materialization, and invisible feeling rendered as form. Plasmatic Multitudes uses that history as a genealogy of body images, not as evidence for the metaphysical claims those images once carried ([Wilson, 2013](https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748627691.001.0001); [Bukatman, 2012](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Poetics_of_Slumberland.html?id=wi8NYAAACAAJ)). ### Craft keeps impossible bodies readable Special-effects animation adds a practical rule that still holds in XR: impossible motion becomes believable when it follows observed forces, preserves an underlying energy, and stays consistent with the surrounding world. Bernal and Maes make the same point in a social-VR register. Their fur and particle avatars are not relatable because they are humanlike. They are relatable because transformation is tied to expression, physiology, and mannerism ([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, 2017](https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3053207)). Design translation ## From avatar to installation to care Weakly bounded bodies translate across media. In XR they may become avatars, aura fields, particle hands, or shared light bodies. In installation they may become projected bodies, simulation fields, haze, scrims, tracking, or responsive light. Danceroom Spectroscopy is a key bridge because it makes physics simulation into an embodied public encounter: people move inside a field of particles and forces rather than inside a sealed character shell ([Mitchell et al., 2016](https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_00924)). The same line becomes a preservation problem. O'Connor and colleagues opened molecular dynamics into collaborative VR, while the later esencia case study reinterprets danceroom as a living technical and experiential system rather than a fixed hardware stack. For Plasmatic Multitudes, this is part of the design problem: if a body is partly a simulation, particle field, or live apparatus, then preserving the work means preserving its body logic, relation, and behavior as much as its files ([O'Connor et al., 2018](https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aat2731); [Toledo Castro et al., 2025](https://doi.org/10.1145/3749893.3749972); [Fiordelmondo et al., 2023](https://doi.org/10.3389/frsip.2023.1183294)). Pain-related translation should stay narrower. Existing studies show that embodied visual form, heartbeat-synchronous cues, and immersive placebo-like interventions can affect pain thresholds, pain ratings, or body-perception disturbance. Those studies justify boundary precision as a research variable; they do not prove that semi-corporeal avatars are clinical treatments. The honest claim is that soft edges, protective fields, and distributed body form are plausible conditions worth testing when body representation already matters ([Ho et al., 2022](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2021.10.009); [Lewis et al., 2021](https://doi.org/10.1002/ejp.1766); [Martini et al., 2013](https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00438); [Solca et al., 2018](https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000005905); [Bullington, 2013](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6498-9)). ### Working design rules - Keep at least one stable identity carrier while the edge softens. - Make permeability stateful: gather, diffuse, overlap, merge, return. - Use physical scaffolds: force, drag, rhythm, density, latency, response. - Choose metaphors carefully: aura, ghost, swarm, mist, and shield do different work. ### Cautious pain framing Boundary-softened avatars are best described as a study direction: a way to test how boundary precision, materiality, and protective-field imagery interact with ownership, agency, pain, and body-perception measures. Evidence audit ## What is solid, partial, and open The best-supported ground is perception, XR embodiment, pseudo-haptics, media genealogy, and several concrete avatar or installation precedents. The less settled ground is broader social translation: shared swarm bodies and mixed-input body fields are promising, but they need careful participant control, visibility, consent, and repair practices before they can support claims about collaboration or access ([Wobbrock et al., 2011](https://kgajos.seas.harvard.edu/papers/wobbrock11abd.pdf); [Bennett et al., 2018](https://doi.org/10.1145/3234695.3236348)). The clinical layer is still open. Pain studies support the broader relevance of body representation and multisensory modulation, but boundary precision itself remains a hypothesis. Here, semi-corporeal pain design remains an experimental extension of existing avatar-pain work, not an established treatment category. ### Solid - Grouping and motion can hold a weak body together. - Avatar form can shape behavior and self-representation. - Pseudo-haptics can make abstract forms feel materially responsive. - Plasmatic and spectral body histories give a careful media genealogy. ### Partial or open - Shared swarm bodies require more source work before becoming a central public essay. - Boundary-softened avatars are plausible pain variables, not proven clinical mechanisms. - Weak bodies are not universally better than realistic avatars; the right form depends on the task. Open direction ## The design question that stays The next useful comparison is not realistic versus abstract. It is a matrix of boundary precision, motion coherence, multisensory coupling, symbolic rigidity, social framing, and task. A particle hand, a light body, an aura-touch avatar, a protective halo, a projected apparition, and a shared swarm field all bend the body in different ways. The question is which bending preserves enough coherence for ownership, agency, relation, or care to survive. Plasmatic Multitudes gives that question a vocabulary. It is about bodies coherent enough to inhabit and unstable enough to change what inhabiting means. Deep field guide ## Where to continue The project page stays compact on purpose. The field guide holds the longer essay, method note, pain-translation hypothesis, vocabulary, and annotated references. ### Go deeper - [Long essay](https://mesmerprism.com/plasmatic-multitudes/essay.html) - semi-corporeal avatar aesthetics across media history, XR, morphogenesis, and pain translation. - [Pain translation](https://mesmerprism.com/plasmatic-multitudes/pain.html) - cautious hypotheses for boundary precision and avatar-pain research. - [Vocabulary](https://mesmerprism.com/plasmatic-multitudes/terminology.html) - terms for weakly bounded bodies across media theory, XR, perception, and care. - [Sources](https://mesmerprism.com/plasmatic-multitudes/references.html) - annotated references and evidence status. References ## Sources and entry points These are the main sources cited above. For deeper reading, the field guide collects the long essay, vocabulary, pain-translation note, and annotated references. ### Embodiment and perception - Shusterman. "[Somaesthetics](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/somaesthetics)." The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction . - Hook et al. "[Somaesthetic Design](https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2598561)." Interactions (2015). - Wagemans et al. "[A Century of Gestalt Psychology in Visual Perception](https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029333)." Psychological Bulletin 138(6) (2012). - Johansson. "[Visual Perception of Biological Motion and a Model for Its Analysis](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03212378)." Perception & Psychophysics 14(2) (1973). - Yee and Bailenson. "[The Proteus Effect](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00299.x)." Human Communication Research 33(3) (2007). ### Particles, swarms, and pseudo-haptics - Reeves. "[Particle Systems: A Technique for Modeling a Class of Fuzzy Objects](https://doi.org/10.1145/357318.357320)." ACM Transactions on Graphics 2(2) (1983). - Reynolds. "[Flocks, Herds, and Schools](https://doi.org/10.1145/37402.37406)." SIGGRAPH (1987). - Lecuyer. "[Simulating Haptic Feedback Using Vision](https://doi.org/10.1162/pres.18.1.39)." Presence 18(1) (2009). - Pusch and Lecuyer. "[Pseudo-Haptics: From the Theoretical Foundations to Practical System Design Guidelines](https://doi.org/10.1145/2070481.2070494)." ICMI (2011). - Collins and Kapralos. "[Pseudo-Haptics: A Review of Leveraging Cross-Modal Perception in Virtual Environments](https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2019.1619318)." The Senses and Society 14(3) (2019). ### Media genealogy - Eisenstein. [On Disney](https://seagullbooks.org/products/on-disney) . Seagull Books (2017). - Geil. "[Plasmatic Mimesis](https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=813411)." World Literature Studies 11(4) (2019). - Whissel. [Spectacular Digital Effects](https://www.dukeupress.edu/spectacular-digital-effects) . Duke University Press (2014). - Wilson. [Modernism and Magic](https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748627691.001.0001) . Edinburgh University Press (2013). - Bukatman. [The Poetics of Slumberland](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Poetics_of_Slumberland.html?id=wi8NYAAACAAJ) . University of California Press (2012). - Owens. [The Ghost](https://shop.tate.org.uk/the-ghost-a-cultural-history-paperback/22503.html) . Tate Publishing (2017). - Gunning. "[Illusions Past and Future](https://mediaarthistory.org/refresh/Programmatic%20key%20texts/pdfs/Gunning.pdf)." Refresh! (2004). - Natale. "[A Short History of Superimposition](https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2012.664745)." Early Popular Visual Culture 10(2) (2012). - Gilland. [Elemental Magic](https://archive.org/details/elemental-magic/page/n2/mode/1up) . Focal Press (2009). - Gilland. [Elemental Magic, Volume II](https://archive.org/details/elemental-magic-volume-ii/mode/1up) . Focal Press (2012). ### XR and weak representation - Richards et al. "[Virtual Reality and Virtual Bodies](https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/2177/0000/Virtual-reality-and-virtual-bodies/10.1117/12.173894.full)." SPIE 2177 (1994). - dos Anjos and Pereira. "[Effects of Realism and Representation on Self-Embodied Avatars in Immersive Virtual Environments](https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02672)." arXiv (2024). - Desnoyers-Stewart et al. "[Body RemiXer](https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_01925)." Leonardo 53(4) (2020). - Desnoyers-Stewart et al. "[Embodied Telepresent Connection (ETC)](https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585843)." CHI EA (2023). - Glowacki et al. "[Group VR Experiences Can Produce Ego Attenuation and Connectedness Comparable to Psychedelics](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12637-z)." Scientific Reports 12 (2022). - Glowacki. "[VR Models of Death and Psychedelics](https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1286950)." Frontiers in Virtual Reality 4 (2024). - Bernal and Maes. "[Emotional Beasts](https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3053207)." CHI EA (2017). ### Installation and preservation - Mitchell et al. "[danceroom Spectroscopy](https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_00924)." Leonardo 49(2) (2016). - O'Connor et al. "[Sampling Molecular Conformations and Dynamics in a Multiuser Virtual Reality Framework](https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aat2731)." Science Advances 4(6) (2018). - Toledo Castro, Protopopov, and Glowacki. "[esencia](https://doi.org/10.1145/3749893.3749972)." Expanded 2025 (2025). - Fiordelmondo et al. "[A Multilevel Dynamic Model for Documenting, Reactivating and Preserving Interactive Multimedia Art](https://doi.org/10.3389/frsip.2023.1183294)." Frontiers in Signal Processing 3 (2023). - Fiordelmondo, Canazza, and Pretto. "[Reactivating and Preserving Interactive Multimedia Artworks](https://doi.org/10.1145/3647995)." Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage 17(2) (2024). ### Pain and social translation - Bullington. [The Expression of the Psychosomatic Body from a Phenomenological Perspective](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6498-9) . Springer (2013). - Ho et al. "[Real Bodies Not Required?](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2021.10.009)." The Journal of Pain 23(4) (2022). - Lewis et al. "[Visual Illusions Modulate Body Perception Disturbance and Pain in Complex Regional Pain Syndrome](https://doi.org/10.1002/ejp.1766)." European Journal of Pain 25(7) (2021). - Martini, Perez-Marcos, and Sanchez-Vives. "[What Color Is My Arm?](https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00438)." Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 (2013). - Solca et al. "[Heartbeat-Enhanced Immersive Virtual Reality to Treat Complex Regional Pain Syndrome](https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000005905)." Neurology 91(5) (2018). - Wobbrock et al. "[Ability-Based Design](https://kgajos.seas.harvard.edu/papers/wobbrock11abd.pdf)." ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing 3(3) (2011). - Bennett, Brady, and Branham. "[Interdependence as a Frame for Assistive Technology Research and Design](https://doi.org/10.1145/3234695.3236348)." ASSETS (2018).