T_166
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.04.03, day 96
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S4, Tanxi half-raw, 6-foot
- 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
- 86%
- Dark share
- 30%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 12, water stain 6, bloom 2
Older engine
- V7
- 7
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.
5 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: 0.058 (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
“A working sheet: a strong bottom sweep and a textured central band, but a slab-like top block, a cloudy left grey field, and creases and blots on the surface keep it at an ordinary level.”
Bottom stroke follows brush travel to a tapered tip; top-right block is a bulky rectangle; left grey washes are broad, loosely edged slabs.
WEAKEST Top-right black block: blunt slab with stiff edges
STRONGEST Bottom dark sweep tapering to a point at right
Five tonal steps; dark interiors show grain and banding (modulation 0.058); top block has streaking; left grey field reads as one flat cloudy tone.
WEAKEST Left grey washes, cloudy and near-uniform
STRONGEST Bottom sweep graded from black to grey
Grey vertical and horizontal washes overlap translucently, black passes sit on top readably; left overlaps lose clarity and order.
WEAKEST Left overlapping greys merge into cloudy field
STRONGEST Black block laid legibly over pale grey wash
Two dark masses at right converge around a lit mottled band, giving direction; left grey field is heavy and static, upper-left paper leftover.
WEAKEST Left half: large undirected grey expanse
STRONGEST Top block and bottom sweep bracketing central light
Fold creases cut through top black block and bottom sweep; stray blots centre; speckled spots and cloudy wash in left grey field, visible in colour view.
WEAKEST Crease lines and blots across principal masses
STRONGEST Reticulated dry-brush texture in centre-right band
7 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 7 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: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 8 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 14 edge segments, 43% crisp, 57% soft or bloomed, 0% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
5 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
4 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.