Off the Charts is a series of digital works that employ the rhythm and format of social media to explore how our interpretation, expression and articulation of extreme weather events are shaped by digital communication.

The Instagram account ‘sky.swatches’ chronicles daily samples of the smoke-shrouded sky of the 2019/2020 bushfire season. The resulting colour palette is compiled in the work Shades of Black Summer, recalling the eery light and dirty atmosphere that caused the world’s worst air quality.

Future forecasts, @heatmapcolours, is a live Twitter bot that algorithmically generates nonsensical forecasts using words related to emotions that extreme weather can trigger. Referencing the deep pink and purple hues added to the Bureau of Meteorology’s heatmap in 2013 to represent unprecedented temperatures, the tweets are accompanied with their own invented colour swatch.