T_183
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.04.08, day 101
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S11, Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi, 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
- 58%
- Dark share
- 23%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- ring 9, other 6, water stain 3, bloom 2
Older engine
- V7
- 4
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: 0.044 (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
“Gestural sweeping arc around a strong white void, close to R2. The left mass is clotted and pocked with ringed drops, and the darks are mostly flat inside. Ordinary sheet with a material weakness.”
The big right arc follows the brush's travel and tapers cleanly. The left mass is clotted, with blobby dark lobes, and the bottom-centre dark lump is bulky.
WEAKEST Bottom-centre dark blob and left-edge clotted patches
STRONGEST Right sweeping arc ending in tapered dark tip
The left grey field has grain and veining, and the top-right dark band shows banding. The right-tip and bottom darks are flat inside; modulation is 0.044, below the flat threshold.
WEAKEST Right arc dark terminus is flat inside
STRONGEST Left grey mass with grain, veining and stepped density
The translucent grey arc pass shows under the dark strokes, top right, and the order can be read. On the left, the passes clot together and are less legible.
WEAKEST Left mass where darks clot into the grey
STRONGEST Dark band laid over translucent grey arc, top right
The large arc carries the eye from left to right around a shaped white void in the centre. The left third is crowded and busy with spatter; the bottom-right drops are a weak afterthought.
WEAKEST Crowded, spattered left third
STRONGEST Sweeping arc enclosing a shaped white void
The left grey wash carries many ringed, tide-edged drops and pocks beside the principal masses, plainly visible in the colour view. There is also a white void in the right dark tip.
WEAKEST Ringed drops and pocked spots in left grey wash
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaking along top of arc
5 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 5 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: 4 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 5 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 21 edge segments, 76% crisp, 19% soft or bloomed, 5% 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.