Armstead, ADSS:

The Poet, Storyteller, and Language Architect

The Journey

Since launching this website in the winter of 2023, I periodically return here to update my bio. I’ve gone through different iterations because each time, a different version of myself has been the one to write it. At first my bio was a poem. As I developed some of the frameworks which are the core of my work, I experimented with blending my words with AI, curious if whether another voice might help me translate my vision. Now I’m coming home back to myself, and my own voice.

My name is Armstead. I’m poet, storyteller, and language architect, and the founder of ADSS Creative Studio. My work is rooted in Experiential Language Architecture (ELA), a conceptual framework I created from my own writing. 

The Frameworks

While the backstory of its invention is a long one, the main idea of ELA is, rather than using words to describe, I use them to build.

With ELA, I create Immersive, liberatory experiences. 

One of these experiences is immersive poetry environments I call Versescapes; I implemented my first one at Small Works Gallery in Philadelphia in March 2025. Versescapes blur the line between artist and audience, blending performance, installation, and experience into an immersive new form. Another is A Cappella Poetry, a rhythmic application of ELA that uses cadence, silence, and structure to create music with words. Or they can even be something you wear, what I call Literary Fashion, wearable words. 

I’ve since evolved ELA to extend into a visual language (VLA) and am actively developing Social Analysis Architecture (SAA), where my frameworks of STOP and IICE deconstruct power and exclusion, making subtle, harmful norms visible, through diagnostic frameworks. 

ADSS is my creative platform that runs on ELA. 

The Why

A natural question, I’m sure of many after reading this, is why? Or where did this all come from? I pose both questions together, because their answers are related. All my life I was told I needed to change. To better fit someone else’s script of what I should be or what my life should look like. I’ve spent decades, trying to conform to systems that limit, rather than encourage my own expansion. ADSS is me, on my terms, building what I think the world truly needs. Not more performance and fragile attempts at perfection. But authenticity, grounded in integrity. 

This is a new version of myself, so as I stated at the top, a new version of my bio. 

I look forward to seeing how I, and ADSS, evolve in the future.

I hope you are too.

From love,

Towards togetherness,

In forgiveness,

Armstead/ADSS