Collecting data

During the process of data collection, I chose to datafy and digitize my wardrobe, which immediately required curatorial decisions regarding what should be included and how it should be represented. As Kitchin (2022) argues, data are never raw but are produced through active processes of selection and framing. I found myself favoring shirts over other pieces, with my aesthetic preferences strongly affecting these choices, this reminded me of how data practices are situated and influenced by personal values (Dalton & Thatcher, 2014; Wernimont, 2021). This in turn led me to create categories such as emotional attachment as an attempt to datafy the affective relations i have to my shirts. As Bowker and Star (2000) demonstrate, classification systems are constructed to make sense of lived realities and inevitably reflect the worldview of me as a classifier.