Smart Meter

Added to the Museum of Data by Hannah Knox on Sunday, March 17, 2019. Museum of Data Collection ID: 306.

Public description: A smart meter installed in a house in Manchester in 2015 by the electricity company OVO as part of a UK smart meter government initiative. The smart meter is an assemblage of objects, data, data flows and data-displays that collectively enact the funcionality of a 'smart' energy meter. The object is not located in a geographically located museum archive but is a functioning assemblage located in a house, on a server somewhere, on a display that can be accessed online anywhere with an internet connection. The data element constitutes private information that can only be accessed by the owner of the data and by the energy company and is outside the archive of the museum, although a screenshot of energy data is included. To what extent can we say that this assemblage is part of a museum collection? Can a museum collection be disaggregated across space? What is the relationship between ownership and access when compiling a museum of 'data' objects. Does it make sense to have a museum of data that does not own anything but only has access rights to representations of things?

Materials used: plastic, electricity, gas, copper wires, copper pipes, wireless signal, router, server, database, user interface software. (this raises the question as to what the materiality of data is?).

Credit: Hannah Knox

Copyright: Creative Commons

Language: English

Creation date: 2019/07/02 00:00:00

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