Golden Imprints of Danish Cultural Heritage. A Multi-Modal Foundation Model for Temporal Reconstructions of the Danish Golden Age

In the political turbulence of the 21st century, the status of the nation-state has been reified and Danish national history is a selling point for long lists of political projects and cultural products. But the past is not just the past, and given historical reconstructions are foundational. For Denmark, the so-called Golden Age of the first half of the 19th century, plays this role. It has drawn substantial scholarly work in the university and GLAM sectors alike, just as it impacts edutainment productions and curricula at all educational levels. With Golden Imprints of Danish Cultural Heritage – A Multi-Modal Foundation Model for Temporal Reconstructions of the Danish Golden Age (Golden Imprints), we 1) evaluate reconstructions of the Golden Age focusing particularly on problems originating in data sparsity and low temporal sensitivity; and 2) build an alternative high resolution reconstruction based on the most extensive multi-modal data set available and state of the art foundational representation learning in AI combined with the most recent advances in information theoretical analysis of historical change. Thus, the results of Golden Imprints not only afford substantial advances in our understanding of the Danish Golden Age, but also the to date most comprehensive repository of cultural heritage object representations that will accelerate research and communication of the Golden Age for decades to come.