The data is compiled from sensors in the asphalt which are able to recognize metal objects (bikes) moving over them. They then are transmitted in a computer which is next to the measuring device and turned into machine readable data. Then they are transmitted through some script to the data dashboard. From there, information is extracted (e.g. from local political/administrative actors) and used primarely (supposedly) for public debate.
Data mutate in the form of "reductions" but also by being complemented with more data (meta data, time stamps). The juxtaposition/ comparison/ relation to other data along the way (to determine if it is a bike or not; as one bike data nod in a map and hence adding to "bikes in Frankfurt"; as bike data in relation to other traffic data) is providing different data contexts on each site. In a sense it is an endless (?) bifurcation - created as a binary that becomes again part of a different context where it creates another bifurcation (I am thinking here of Strathern's binary license as picked up by Andrea Ballestero in Future History of Water). Any reduction becomes enmeshed in a wider context. This could be a way to focus on both the reductions and proliferating contexts as part of the journeys.
The flow of electrones in the cables in the ground is altered due to electromagnetic interaction with metal that moves above them. These variantions in the flow are interpreted by sensors and first transformed in electromagnetic signals that are explicitly data. These signals are then investigated by a computer that runs the SIRIUS algorithm to detect, what kind of metalic thing passed by. In this step the data is juxtaposed to big datasets in order to lable it. The computer then sends its interpretation that now is put into the form of encoded text to the eco counter servers and ads metadata like place and date to it. At this point, the data is already once completely reconfigured and includes not anymore the information it had in the beginning bit only the interpretation of the algorithm. In the steps that follow, the data is reduced more and more. On the city's internal dashboard, the kind of vehicle that passed might be still visible, on the public dashboard however, every measurement is reduced to a 1 with a timestamp. While in the beginning very complex sensor data existed, in the end, the data is stripped in the way that it only shows that another bike was measured.
For the traffic model, the data is then historisized and combined with many other datasets in order to provide new meaning.