What is it that software sees, hears and perceives when technologies for pattern recognition are applied to media historical sources? All historical work requires interpretation, but what kind of algorithmic interpretations of modernity does software yield from historical archives? Modern Times 1936 – funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (2023-25) – is empirically committed to everyday experiences and sets out to study how machines interpret symbols of modernity in media from 1936. By utilising photographic and audiovisual collections, the project seeks to analyse how modern Sweden was, while also exploring how computational methods can help us understand modernity in new ways. Modern Times 1936 will explore how artificial intelligence and machine learning methods can foster new knowledge about the history of Swedish modernity––while at the same time critically scrutinizing algorithmic toolboxes for the study of the past.