| Tony Conrad graduated from Harvard University in 1962 with a degree in Mathematics. He knew that the simplest solution to a problem is the most elegant one. There is a relationship between truth and elegance, between aesthetics and logic, and it tends to favor the simple. Truth can not become more true, it can only become false, but elegance seems to make some truths more. What more, is a question that Tony asked outside the field of mathematics, even when he was referring to Pythagoras. How to escape simple ratios, even if they are elegant and true. Playing the Neo-Platonist, I give the answer here: it is through time. As we are always in time, we do not notice its passing. We only notice time when something changes. To the Anti-Platonist this solution is a reductio ad absurdum: Just because we don't notice something doesn't make something true. To escape this dualism, I imagine Tony with Sol Lewitt's 1,2,3. It is only when we move around it, will we experience that it is more than we thought. If this all just gives you a headache consider the imperceptible rise in the upper harmonics of a complex waveform. This makes sameness difficult to habituate: as soon as we have gotten used to the fact that nothing changes, something has changed that brings the unchangeable back to our attention. All we need is time.
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