MOST: bringing Krakow's Jewish heritage to life through AI-generated voices

MOST — meaning “bridge” in Polish — is a location-based, AI-powered narrative experience premiering at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow. 

Conceived and produced by Andrew Melchior, a sonic systems artist working across history, place, and machine learning, MOST combines AI voice synthesis, archival materials, and location-based storytelling to immerse listeners in the layered history of Kazimierz.

AI voices that listen, guide, and remember

This innovative guide draws on personal testimonies and historical documents to reveal Jewish life in interwar Poland.

As visitors move through the district, they’re met with intimate, multilingual voices that respond to location, connecting individual experience with collective memory in an immediate, location-aware format.

MOST uses ElevenLabs voice technology to animate these stories. A female Polish narrator guides listeners through Kazimierz, while the voice of a fictional Jewish male — shaped from period sources — offers playful and poignant observations in English. The result is a layered, adaptive soundscape that bridges the personal and the historical.

MOST is also a pilot for a new class of narrative engines — blending voice AI, location awareness, and cultural sovereignty to deliver adaptive, site-specific experiences across cities and generations.

Backed by ElevenLabs Impact

MOST was developed through the ElevenLabs Impact initiative — supporting cultural and civic uses of AI.

As a company founded by Polish engineers, helping bring Krakow’s Jewish past into a new era of digital remembrance is deeply meaningful to us.

Voice can do more than speak. It can remember.