Simply by living, we all generate and leave behind traces of our identity, be they insurance policy numbers, bank account numbers, registration numbers, customer numbers, passport numbers, and so on.

In our increasingly datafied world, it can sometimes seem that we are actually defined not by who we are and our actions, but by whether we leave behind enough of such traces to be quantified.

What can one learn about Münster by looking, say, at the Wikipedia page for the city? The traces of the city that are recorded there seem to concentrate largely on population growth, the dates of important events, and the religious history of the city: for example, the three cages hanging from the tower of St. Lambert’s Church, which were originally used to display the corpses of men who rebelled against the strictures of the church.