Spatial Storytelling with AI and GPS

We’re exploring on this platform how emerging technologies can deepen our connection to landscape, history, memory, and community.

Produced by C&R Interactive, this project represents a five-year collaboration with the Warren County Department of Planning and Community Development to support heritage tourism and civic storytelling throughout the First Wilderness region of the southern Adirondacks.

Working with such organizations as the Warren County Historical Society, Johnsburg Historical Society, Hadley-Lake Luzerne Historical Society, and the Thurman Community Association, we have been writing magazine-length feature stories, trip reports, interactive maps, and GPS-triggered audio to help residents and visitors experience the region in richer and more meaningful ways.

Our work begins with a simple idea: Every landscape holds stories. In an expanding range of self-guided audio experiences, we invite listeners to encounter history where it happened.

In our newest projects, we have incorporated such AI tools as NotebookLM, ChatGPT, and ElevenLabs to help organize historical research, develop narrative structure, and generate lifelike first-person audio performances rooted in historical documents and oral histories. These technologies now allow visitors not simply to read about the past, but to hear it speak.

In Lake Luzerne, for example, listeners can encounter AI-assisted narratives voiced in the first person by historical figures including Benjamin Clapp Butler, Edward Garnar, and Kateri Tekakwitha — creating immersive experiences that blend historical scholarship, landscape interpretation, and emerging media.

Our goal is to give communities powerful new tools for preserving and sharing their stories. We aim to help communities strengthen civic memory, expand access to local history, support tourism and education, and inspire deeper engagement with the places we inhabit.