“Numbers make problems less resonant emotionally but more tractable intellectually. (...) In the cozy confines of personal life, we rarely used the power of numbers. The techniques of analysis that had proved so effective were left behind at the office. (...) Why not use numbers on ourselves?”
“Nicholas Felton began producing annual reports about various activities he had engaged over the previous year in 2005, wich he published under the moniker ‘Feltron’ in the form of a printed annual report. Beginning with such data as the number of songs listened to, miles flown books read, restaurants visited, types of foods eaten, and so on he began to form a composite portrait of his life, expressed in various charts and graphs of his design. Feltron’s project recalls the work of Charles Madge, Tom Harrison and Humphrey Jennings, who created Mass-Observation in 1930s Britain that used observers to record the everyday behaviours of average citizens unlike Madge’s and Harrison’s third party reportage, Feltron typically relies instead on self-recording, reporting and interpretation of data.”
