T_159
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.03.28, day 90
- Size
- 70 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S3, Tanxi Jing Pi, raw
- Inks
- MB1, MB2, MB3
- Phase
- P1 Warm-up
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
- Early storage triage
- SA: save, archive (Peter's early system, since retired)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 5
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1
- Ink cover
- 76%
- Dark share
- 35%
- Tonal steps
- 7
- Flaws named by the reads
- bloom 3, ring 6, water stain 7, other 2, tide line 2
Older engine
- V7
- 9
How the number was made
Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.8, on 2026.10.06: measured by code, then read 5 times by Claude Opus 5.5 against three reference paintings (R1 to R3), each read independent of the others. How the engine works.
Three views of one sheet.
Left, the photograph. Centre, the tone stretch the model is shown beside it: the darkest 45% of tones spread over the whole range, so flat black, banding and stains show. Right, every pixel as the measuring code classes it: cyan black ink, deep teal translucent grey, stone the palest ink, near black bare paper.
7 families of tone.
Every inked pixel's brightness in 64 bins, smoothed; each circled peak holds at least 4% of the ink. Life inside the black: 0.063 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, one answer.
Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps.
READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“An ordinary sheet. A strong sweeping arc with good dry-brush and grained tone is let down by a weak, bloomed right crescent and by water rings in the grey wash.”
The left arc follows the brush's travel, ending in fluent dry-brush streaks. The left end is bulky and slab-like. The right crescent's edges are blotchy, not fully made.
WEAKEST Right crescent: blotchy, its walls dissolve into mottling
STRONGEST Main sweeping arc with dry-brush tail
Seven tonal steps and dark modulation of 0.063. The arc shows grain, cracks and graded density. The far-left dark mass is fairly flat. The right crescent is mottled rather than modelled.
WEAKEST Lower-left black end of arc is fairly uniform
STRONGEST Arc body grading from black to grain-streaked grey
There is a grey ground wash, a dark arc pass, dry-brush overstrokes and the right crescent. These overlaps can be read at centre, but the sequence doesn't build much depth.
WEAKEST The black arc mostly covers the grey wash beneath
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaks crossing the pale grey wash at centre
The big arc gives strong left-to-right movement and shapes the white oval. The right-hand crescent echoes the curve, but the gap of grey wash at centre-right feels slack.
WEAKEST The right crescent sits isolated and is weakly tied in
STRONGEST Large arc enclosing the shaped white oval upper-left
The right crescent's interior is full of bloom rings and blotches. There are tide rings in the grey wash at centre-right and pale stain splotches in the white oval, all visible in the colour view.
WEAKEST Bloomed, ringed interior of right crescent
STRONGEST Dry-brush streak edges of the arc's tail
6 distinct places, 2 major.
Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 6 distinct places, 20 mentions in all across 5 reads; the number in each ninth is how many times a flaw was named there. Reads agreeing on a place strengthen the evidence for one flaw; they do not multiply it. A major flaw holds Material and surface at rung 1.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 2 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 7 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 17 edge segments, 29% crisp, 59% soft or bloomed, 12% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
7 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
6 major flaws: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.0.
Engine v23.8, 5 reads. Fixed arithmetic, the same for every painting; the constants were set on 24 randomly chosen paintings so the median sheet scores 5. The scale is relative to this archive, not to painting in general, and a difference of less than half a point between two paintings is noise.