On Instagram, Pinterest, Vimeo, TikTok, my phone and laptop screenshots, even flyers or magazines I physically keep, my visual references always surround me. In this case, I’ve used as a data set the 252 posts I had saved in my Visual References folder in my Instagram account to create a data visualization that works as a self-portrait.

This data represents me, it is a snapshot of my personal world, it visualizes a private area of my online presence.

The exercise has been to reduce every post saved into 10 columns of color. Above you can see two visualizations: the scroll on the phone, and the 3x3 grid (following the iconic grid of Instagram) where images merge from one to another, creating a more abstract piece which practically turns all the references into a single one. Both visualizations work in a loop, to evoke the ‘infinite scroll’, the incessant source of content that is Instagram or any other social network. Because in the end, saving so many references - even though in the moment I enjoy it - ends up making me anxious since when I go back to that collection of saved images I have to navigate through tons of references and I end up getting lost or overwhelmed. They feel like an unfathomable mass of colors.