T_184
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
- 5.8
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 70%
- Dark share
- 29%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- ring 5, bloom 4, other 1
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.
4 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: 0.053 (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 gestural arc sheet with a vivid radiating burst at right. A blunt, flattish dark mass and a crowded bottom edge hold it at ordinary level, close to R2.”
The grey arc and the radiating right burst follow the brush's travel. The bottom-centre dark mass is bulky and lobed, with soft walls.
WEAKEST Bottom-centre dark mass, a blunt blob
STRONGEST Sweeping grey arc from top-left down
The right mass has a crackled interior, streaked rays and graded greys. The arc shows streaking. The bottom dark mass is mostly flat inside. Modulation is 0.053.
WEAKEST Bottom-centre dark mass, fairly uniform inside
STRONGEST Right burst: reticulated interior and radiating grey bristles
The translucent arc pass reads under the later dark dabs, spatter and the right burst. There are about two to three passes, and the order is readable without building depth.
WEAKEST Bottom dark mass sits opaquely over the arc
STRONGEST Grey arc wash under the dark dabs and burst
The arc carries the eye from top left to the right burst and shapes the empty paper at top centre. The bottom edge is crowded, with mass jammed against the edge.
WEAKEST Lower band, crowded and heavy across the bottom
STRONGEST Large arc linking left to the right burst
The reticulated bloom in the right burst looks built on purpose. Small tide-ringed drops sit in the open paper at top centre, away from the principal masses.
WEAKEST Pale ring-edged drops in the top-centre paper
STRONGEST Granulated crackle edges of the right burst
5 distinct places, 0 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, 10 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.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 5 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 19 edge segments, 42% crisp, 53% soft or bloomed, 5% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
4 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
none namedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 2.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.8.
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.