T_179
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.04.05, day 98
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S10, Red Star Mo She Imitation Antique Chu bark, Exhibition Edition
- Inks
- MB1, MB2, MB3
- Phase
- P1 Warm-up
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
- Early storage triage
- PT: probably trash (Peter's early system, since retired)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 5.2
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1.2
- Ink cover
- 70%
- Dark share
- 46%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- tide line 6, other 7, water stain 3, bloom 1, mud 1
Older engine
- V7
- 6
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: 0.057 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 4 of 5 qualities.
Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps. Where reads differ, they differ by one rung; close calls resolve down.
READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“A bold horizontal black band over grey washes. The dry-brush left end is lively, but the right is a stiff, flat slab. The layering can be read, but tide lines in the grey washes beside the band mar the surface.”
The horizontal black band holds its walls and its left end shows brush travel, but the right two-thirds is a bulky rectangular slab. The lower-left sweeps are looser.
WEAKEST Main black band: stiff, slab-like right end
STRONGEST Dry-brush left entry of the horizontal band
The left band carries streaks and grain (modulation 0.057). The grey washes are grainy, but the right half of the black band reads largely flat.
WEAKEST Right half of black band, near-uniform dark
STRONGEST Streaked dry-brush grain in left band
Grey wash blocks sit under the black band and lower sweeps, and their edges stay legible. There are about three passes, but the black largely covers what is under it rather than building depth.
WEAKEST Black band simply covers grey washes beneath
STRONGEST Translucent grey rectangles behind band, top centre
A strong horizontal thrust from left to right, with the lower-left sweep giving counter-movement. The empty paper is shaped top and bottom, but the band sits static and centred.
WEAKEST Static horizontal band dominating centre
STRONGEST Lower-left diagonal sweep countering the band
Pale water lines and hard tide edges run through the grey washes above and right of the black band, visible in the colour view. Stray drops and a pale fringe sit at the band's right end.
WEAKEST Tide-lined grey washes above band, top right
STRONGEST Dry-brush texture at band's left end
6 distinct places, 1 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, 18 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), 5 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 14 edge segments, 21% crisp, 50% soft or bloomed, 29% 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.
3 major flaws: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.2A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.2.
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.