The four-chapter exhibition presented the origins of counting, the issues related to accounting, the promise and challenge of the big data and refreshing data. The temporary exhibition at Estonian National Museum included ethnographic items from the collections, texts, participatory engagement tools like fill-in material, chalk-wall, collections about cultural consumption, and two creative opinion surveys - one on the issues of big data, another on the issues of cultural measurement.

MeMind project has been seeking ways to measure and understand the impact of cultural activities and institutions. Our explorations have taken us to reflect upon the questions of data and measuring and to trace that through “Number Fascination” an exhibition in the Do It Yourself Hall at the Estonian National Museum. The exhibition had four chapters:

• The first story – origins of counting and measuring
• The second story – (ac)counting
• The third story – the promise and the challenge of big data
• The fourth story – refreshing data

Number fascinationA reflection on data and measuring

An exhibition is open from 3rd of May until 2nd of October 2022.

Our lives are full of numbers and metrics. The minutes you need to boil an egg, the temperature outside, the hours until the end of the workday, the hourly pay rate of your job, the recommended amount of salt in your daily diet, the number of likes on your latest social media post. Numbers help to make sense of what we think, feel and know. Everything can be measured, once we learn how to count.

Since the 16th century, Europeans have become increasingly obsessed with collecting data. The ability to describe the world quantitatively gave way to modern science and the hope that we could understand how things are.

When you count things, you probably feel achievement and success: the number of followers you have on social media, the clicks on your latest post, the number of steps you have taken this day. But to know what decisions you need to make, good metrics and a clear understanding of what is being measured are needed. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Or can you?

This exhibition is part of Me-Mind, a Creative Europe project that aims to measure and visualise the effect of culture. Throughout the process, we’ve come up with great questions about what measuring and counting mean, their challenges and the effect they can have on people. We’re sharing these thoughts in the form of an exhibition.

Please ask yourself about your relationship with data as you are going through the sections of the exhibition. And when you reach the last one, where we present the results of our investigation, please ask questions and be critical of what we have developed. All data sets should be questioned by as many minds as possible.