Visual Storytelling
Narrative Visual Generation for Human ConnectionPoewell creates AI-guided visual narratives for trauma and grief support. Through generative art and shared ritual practices, it helps organizations offer scalable, meaningful healing experiences that integrate into therapy programs, veteran services, and wellness initiatives. It rebuilds the symbolic spaces grief demands, extending collective ritual and connection to geographically distributed communities.
Our Approach
Computational Hierotopy & Eudaimonic AII've developed two interconnected frameworks to describe Poewell's approach:Computational Hierotopy is the method of using AI to create sacred experiences through generative visual storytelling. Drawing from art historian Alexei Lidov's concept of hierotopy (Greek: hieros = sacred, topos = place); the creation of sacred space through orchestrated imagery, architecture, light, and ritual.Computational Hierotopy extends this ancient practice into digital domains. AI-generated visual narratives become the medium for creating sacred spaces for collective meaning-making.Eudaimonic AI is the philosophy of approaching technology explicitly from the non-deterministic perspective that the technologies can and should be designed to serve human flourishing (eudaimonia) rather than simply for profit or engagement metrics.This was, in fact, the original founding principle of OpenAI in 2015, established as a nonprofit "to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity" rather than "the private gain of any person." The founders explicitly rejected technological determinism—the notion that technology development must follow an inevitable path driven by market forces—choosing instead to prioritize long-term human benefit over short-term gains.OpenAI's subsequent shift from nonprofit to for-profit structure and its 2024 restructuring as a public benefit corporation sparked widespread criticism that the organization had abandoned its eudaimonic mission for a "profit-driven AI arms race." This transformation exemplifies precisely what Eudaimonic AI seeks to resist: the erosion of human-centered values under competitive pressure.Computational Hierotopy, grounded in Eudaimonic AI principles, maintains that technology serving grief recovery and meaning reconstruction must remain committed to human sovereignty and flourishing over extractive value capture—not as idealism, but as the essential condition for sacred space to exist.This framework positions AI as a tool to advance the transformative experiences that traditional sacred practices provide, such as coherence-making, symbolic expression, ritual structure, and pathways through grief and trauma.How It Works
Just as Byzantine churches orchestrated mosaics, candlelight, incense, and liturgy to create immersive sacred experiences, Poewell orchestrates AI-generated imagery, symbolic narrative arcs, and guided rituals to facilitate transformation. The system is configurable; it can be tuned to different therapeutic contexts, spiritual traditions, or individual needs while maintaining its core function: creating thresholds between ordinary experience and sacred/healing space.Why This Matters
Our culture has largely lost the collective capacity to create and sustain the symbolic spaces that major life transitions demand. Traditional rituals for grief, trauma, and transformation once provided structured pathways through emotional wilderness. Computational Hierotopy offers a way to rebuild these spaces in digital form—not as a replacement for human connection, but as scaffolding that makes healing rituals accessible, scalable, and deeply personal.The Sacred and the Therapeutic
I recognize that "sacred" and "therapeutic" often overlap.The experiences that facilitate psychological healing, coherence-making, symbolic expression, witnessing, ritual container, are often the same elements that traditional sacred practices provided.Poewell operates at this intersection, using generative AI to create secular sacred space: environments where profound transformation becomes possible regardless of religious tradition. The individual brings whatever spiritual or philosophical framework works for them, and Poewell configures itself to support that journey.In Practice
When someone engages with Poewell, they're not just making art, they're entering a carefully orchestrated visual-narrative environment designed to facilitate movement through emotional terrain. The AI generates imagery that responds to their journey, creating a personalized hierotopy: a sacred space uniquely configured to their needs, yet structured by universal patterns we've discovered in how humans navigate grief, trauma, and transformation.This is Computational Hierotopy: ancient wisdom about how humans create meaningful space, reimagined through generative AI for a culture that desperately needs new ways to hold what's sacred.— Dennis Stevens, Ed.D.
Creator of Poewell and the Computational Hierotopy Framework
About
Visual Storytelling for Human Connection
Poewell uses AI-generated visual narrative to create transformative experiences for trauma and grief support. Organizations can offer branded, art-powered healing through guided creative tools and shared ritual practices that integrate seamlessly into clinical art-therapy programs, veteran services, and wellness initiatives.How It Works
Through working with veterans and others navigating complex emotions, we discovered that feelings move through recognizable, symbolic phases that can be visually mapped. Poewell transforms personal journeys—whether trauma recovery, grief, or life transition—into meaningful, coherent visual narratives that make invisible emotions visible and actionable.Our platform empowers clinicians and facilitators to guide individuals and groups through these visual narrative arcs, providing scalable, tracked, and emotionally resonant support for healing and growth.For Veterans
Poewell isn’t therapy, and it’s not a mental-health app.It’s a private space where you can work with your inner life in a way that doesn’t require talking, explaining, or retelling your story.Inside Poewell, images aren’t just pictures. They act more like moments or scenes you move through. Sometimes things get confusing, sometimes new patterns appear, and sometimes the quiet, next level settles in as part of the process. But, this is not linear.We designed Poewell for people who’ve had experiences that don’t fit neatly into clinical checkboxes. Veterans know that some experiences can’t be put neatly into words. Poewell gives you a symbolic environment where those experiences can be expressed, take shape, and over time, maybe loosen their grip, without you having to spell everything out explicitly.There’s no right way to use it.No judgment.No interpretation.Just a guided space where your own process can unfold at your pace.Poewell respects the inner life, including the parts that are hard to talk about. It’s built to help you move through transitions, losses, and turning points without being analyzed or pushed. You stay in control, and everything you create remains private, unless you choose to share it.The Foundation
Beneath the surface, Poewell rebuilds the inner landscapes that grief and major life transitions demand. It restores the symbolic spaces and ritual structures our culture once created collectively but has forgotten how to sustain, giving individuals and communities a place to recover meaning, coherence, and connection.About Dr. Dennis Stevens, Inventor of Poewell
Dr. Dennis Stevens is a U.S. Coast Guard veteran, visual artist, and the creator of Poewell's visual storytelling platform. With a Doctorate in Art and Art Education from Columbia University's Teachers College, Dr. Stevens developed Poewell while pioneering trauma-informed creative healing technologies at the Sempergeist Institute.Dennis is the author of Sacred Descent of the Warrior, Memoir of an Esteemed Dipteran and the founder of the Sempergeist Institute (Conway Cultural Development Corporation).
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Work With Us
+ For Developers: Integrate Poewell into your platform
+ For Brands: Commission custom visual campaign arcs
+ For Researchers: Collaborate on trauma-informed creative technology
+ For Platforms: Explore white-label narrative generation