What colour is the internet today?

At the MCA’s Data Dreams: Art and AI exhibition, I stood in front of Conversions, a heat-sensitive painting that changes in response to emotional data harvested from social media.

Agnieszka Kurant, Conversions. 2025, liquid crystal ink on copper plate, custom AI programming, heat sinks, Peltier elements, 149 x 93 cm

The piece made me think about social media as something larger than billions of individual posts. It has become a vast collective nervous system, constantly twitching in response to wars, elections, celebrity deaths, scandals, memes and somebody’s neighbour putting the bins out incorrectly.

Conversions makes that nervous system visible. Emotion becomes data. Data becomes heat. Heat changes the surface of the painting.

Perhaps something similar happens to us?

Every time we open Instagram or Facebook, we plug ourselves into thousands of other people’s moods. Outrage. Grief. Envy. Anxiety. Celebration. Fear. All arriving between photographs of adorable dogs and suspiciously beautiful kitchens.

I’m not sure human beings were designed for this much emotional information. And I’m certain I wasn’t.

Social media can be wonderful. As a creative, it connects me with other artists, ideas and audiences I would never otherwise encounter. But sometimes I notice the noise getting to me. My thoughts become less my own. My nervous system starts responding to the nervous system of the internet.

That’s usually when I quietly leave. I simply put down the phone and return to drawing, walking, reading or staring at the ocean with my own adorable little dog.

Sometimes disconnecting is how we can reconnect—don’t you agree?

x Victoria

About Victoria Hall

Victoria Hall is an English-born, Australian-based writer and illustrator. She is the creator of three picture books for children, Penny Prickles at Coogee Beach, Eggy Peggy Has Lost Her Leggy and The Fairy Beasts. For more information, check out her really outdated bio here.