Imagine that you have a window. On top and bottom of these windows, there are contact tips, for high voltage discharges. You discharge the tip producing an arc from top to bottom (or bottom to top). Then you discharge next one to the right, and the next, and keep dicharging them sequentially. When you reach the last tip on the window, you start all over again from the left.

The thing is to discharge them fast enough as to produce a wall of discharges. 

Would that separate the gases on both sides of the window?

At the very least, noone would be crazy enough to go through the window while this "shield" was on, althought it might be a really expensive fence.