There is a theory in information science that a signal becomes noise when it cannot be distinguished from the background. The mark-maker’s equivalent: a form becomes invisible when it cannot be distinguished from the forms around it. The practice of working at the edge of legibility — where the mark almost disappears into the surface, where the form almost dissolves into abstraction — is the practice of finding the minimum conditions under which the signal survives. Sometimes the mark survives. Sometimes it goes under. Both outcomes are informative.