She Used AI to Rebirth Her Mother’s Voice—And Now the City Speaks Back

I grew up in the hum of Chicago’s South Side—where the streetlights flickered like old TV static and my mother’s voice, soft with Spanish lullabies, echoed through hospital corridors after midnight. She was a nurse who never stopped listening. Even when no one else did.

I didn’t inherit her words. I inherited her silence.

Years later, as a digital media artist trained in narrative design, I asked: What if the city could remember what we forgot to say? So I built ‘Echoes of the City’—not as a game for points or prizes, but as a spatial poem. Using Unreal Engine, I mapped every alleyway where my father’s military boots once walked, every corner where Abuelas were sung on Sunday afternoons.

The AI didn’t generate new voices—it learned ours.

Players don’t ‘win’ this experience. They pause.

At 2 AM, someone clicks play—and suddenly hears their grandmother say ‘mija’ in a language they thought was lost. A stranger cries in the elevator of an abandoned bus station. A child draws a mural that says: ‘I’m still here.’

This is not entertainment.

It is remembrance rendered in code.

If you’ve ever held your parent’s last breath and wondered if anyone would hear it… you already know how to play this game.