The final statements of Death Row inmates are part of Texas Moments by Tarikh Korula.

Texas Moments (www.TexasMoments.com, Tarikh Korula, USA) is a screen saver featuring the 40 Death Row inmates executed by the state of Texas in the year 2000. Here, the fanciful images we have come to expect from screen savers are instead replaced by pictures of the inmates slowly scrolling by, following the content of their last meal. They cycle one after the other in the order in which they were executed. When a user rolls over an inmate's thumbnail image, a larger picture of him fades in with his final statement, or a blank message stating that the offender declined to make a final statement. All images and texts were pulled from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Website.

Genius!
By far, the most popular displays in the Art Gallery were The Floating Words and Contact Water, two Japanese installations playing with virtual reality and how it affects our senses. The Floating Words (Satoko Moroi, Japan) is a mischievous installation playing with (what else!) words. When a viewer speaks into a microphone, his words slowly flow out of a pipe into a pool and reform, with beautiful color letters falling one by one into the water. Using a stick or a ladle, the viewer can stir the letters or pour them back into the water, undistorted. The artist commented her main goal was to play a joke on people, who are surprised and happy with her trick. She also wanted to create a happy, warm space, like in our childhood. I was curious to know why she chose to display words in a visual and tactile way, as words represent verbal (abstract) communication. She explained that her motivation was primarily to play with the sense of touch. She didn't want the material that flows out of the pipe to take shape as fish, which is what would be expected in water. Instead she decided to use letters and yet give the illusion that letters had substance, like fish. She was really pleased when a viewer asked if the letters were edible!

Talk soup: Letters swim like fish in The Floating Words created by Satoko Moroi.