By the time Merhi began writing poetry at the age of ten, he was already familiar with the languages of computer programming and had become highly skilled at manipulating computers and other complex machines. Since then, much of his artistic practice has involved exploring what he describes as "the bond between natural languages (English, Spanish, Hebrew, etc.) and programming languages (Basic, C, Java, Assembler, etc.)." Through works that explore the connections between technology and language, Merhi presents new ways of experiencing poetry and, in turn, proposes a more humanistic view of technological advances.

Poetic Engineering is organized by Irene Hofmann, Curator of Contemporary Art.

Works in the Exhibition

Some of Merhi's earliest works with machines and poetry are part of the series he calls Atari Poetry. In these works he programs and manufactures video games for the classic Atari 2600 console as a means of exploring the creative connections between technology and language. The programs he developes turn a TV screen into a site for the presentation of his interactive short poems. In Super Atari Poetrythree Atari 2600 modules allow viewers to play and create hundreds of poems.

Interactive and accessible on the internet, Poetic Dialogues is an ongoing poetry-generating project that features short flash movies of people reciting Merhi's poetry. Shot with a wristwatch camera, these short movies featuring invited friends and strangers have a spontaneous and intimate feel to them. Each time the project is engaged on the net, three movies are randomly selected to appear on the screen. As each sequence is played, a new poem is created, and a dialogue is established among the three subjects. Pressing "play" again resets the project and delivers a new combination of three movies and a new composite poem. Hundreds of poems are possible with Poetic Dialogues. With new movies added to this site over time, Poetic Dialogues is a work of increasingly varied meanings and linguistic possibilities.

This is a work that unites a telescope and a piece of poetry placed in a public space. Installed in the window of the Orange Lounge, a telescope directs the viewer's gaze to a neighboring store in the shopping plaza, where Merhi has interved by hanging a small plaque inscribed with a poem on the wall. With its lens focused on the seemingly inconspicuous text, the telescope transforms an otherwise voyeuristic act into a surprising and intimate experience of poetry.

Various sounds, multiple voices, and periods of silence become different tracks in Poesia, each to be played randomly on a CD player. As with many of Merhi's works, the chance reshuffling of poetic fragments in Poesia generates an elaborate and rich symphony of sounds and meanings.

Music and spoken poetry combine in this video work set on the streets of New York. Through five different scenes, Poet in New York presents the life and struggles of a young poet living in New York City.

The Poetic Clock is one of a number of Merhi's works that use a database to store and organize segments of poetry. In this work, a digital clock converts real time into and ever-changing stream of poems presented on a screen or projected onto a wall. With every hour, minute, and second corresponding to a verse that changes when the time changes, The Poetic Clock 2.0 generates 86,400 different poems every day.

In Poetic Words, Merhi combines fragments of seemingly disparate words to create evocative new hybrid words related to social, political, and philosophical issues. Each of these composite words, such as terrorgasm (terror-orgasm) or anorecstasy (anorexia-ecstasy), is programmed into a hand-held device that projects the word using LEDs (light-emitting diodes). Each of these seven deevices remains dormant, its content concealed until a viewer interacts with it by picking up the device and moving it in space.