The Poetic Clock is an electronic clock that transforms time into poetry and generates 86.400 diferent poems every day. It is comprised by 4 rows of text. Every time an hour changes a new verse is printed on the first line. When a minute changes a verse pops on the second line. The change of seconds is represented by the change of verses on the third line. Finally, the fourth line shows the hour as HH:MM:SS The reading of the three verses produces an articulated and coherent poem; a poem that mutates each second, minute and hour; a poem that is continuously becoming another of itself, displaying through language the movement of time. Therefore, the clock produces no more and no less than 86.400 poems every single day.

Between 1997 and 2000, the electronic version of The Poetic Clock was shown in museums and exhibition spaces of Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil and the United States. In 2000, following the premises set by Nicholas Negroponte about the conversion from atoms to bits; Merhi programmed a software that emulates the same process of the machine, but showing the result as a video projection. This translation from hardware to software facilitated the preservation, reproduction, transportation and exhibition of The Poetic Clock. Because of the intangible nature of the projection, the new approach was closer to the immaterial condition of time.

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