Imaginary Presence

a book & research project in progress

Imaginary Presence is my ongoing inquiry into what it means to appear and to be perceived in a world of digital humans, synthetic voices, and artificial intelligence.

It’s a book, a set of experiments, and a research practice.

Each essay is both a draft chapter and a field experiment: written in public and revised through dialogue.

I use this space to explore how AI and immersive systems are reshaping the human sense of self, story, and presence.

• What happens when the interface has a face?

• When learning, care, and creation unfold through avatars that reflect us but are not us?

Structure of the Work

Part I — Why Avatars Matter
Explores the phenomenology of digital humans and how presence moves from physical space into computational form.
Tag: avatars

Part II — The Digital Human Stack
Dissects the layers that make synthetic beings possible: language models, world models, embodiment, graphics, and sound.
Tag: digital-human-stack

Part III — Social Reconfiguration
Examines how these systems reorganize work, learning, intimacy, and leisure.
Tag: synthetic-society

Part IV — Norms & Governance
Considers what rules, ethics, and cultural grammars we need for living with digital humans.
Tag: ethics-and-governance

Part V — Builder’s Field Guide
Collects frameworks, design patterns, and heuristics for those creating with and through AI.
Tag: builders-guide

Connection to Never Fear

This research is the theoretical counterpart to my narrative universe Never Fear: a storyworld unfolding through games, films, and interactive experiences. Never Fear imagines how people live, create, and remember within the systems that Imaginary Presence studies.

→ Explore the Never Fear storyworld

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Reading the Work in Progress

Start anywhere, follow curiosity, or trace the structure of the book through the tags outlined above.

This work evolves in public: slowly, deliberately, and with gratitude for those reading along.