  Boundary correlation functions provide insight into the emergence of an
effective geometry in higher spin gravity duals of O(N) or U(N) symmetric field
theories. On a compact manifold, the singlet constraint leads to nontrivial
dynamics at finite temperature and large N phase transitions even at vanishing
't Hooft coupling. At low temperature, the leading behavior of boundary
two-point functions is consistent with propagation through a bulk thermal anti
de Sitter space. Above the phase transition, the two-point function shows
significant departure from thermal AdS space and the emergence of localized
black hole like objects in the bulk. In adjoint models, these objects appear at
length scales of order of the AdS radius, consistent with a Hawking-Page
transition, but in vector models they are parametrically larger than the AdS
scale. In low dimensions, we find another crossover at large distances beyond
which the correlation function again takes a thermal AdS form, albeit with a
temperature dependent normalization factor.
