Born in 2017 at the EPFL, the Montreux Jazz Memories project has evolved into a precious living archive of the Montreux Jazz Festival. To date, more than 1,000 testimonials have been collected, making up an impressive collection of oral history. For the 2025 edition of the festival, a new collection campaign has been launched, further enriching this unique heritage.
Based on all these interviews, EPFL students produce podcasts every semester, which are available on the notreHistoire.ch gallery. Artificial intelligence is also being used to enrich this initiative: the testimonies are explored, grouped together and transformed into short thematic stories that can be generated automatically from the collective memory.
It’s a project where technology gives voice to the past – and where the students show us how memories become the stuff of creation.