T_219
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.04.15, day 108
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S11, Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi, raw
- Inks
- MB4, MB5, MB6
- Phase
- P2 The Switch
- 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
- 80%
- Dark share
- 23%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- bloom 8, water stain 4, tide line 3
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: 0.047 (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
“Energetic gestural sheet like R2: a strong right arc sweeping into a dark central mass, with lively splatter. Left washes are crowded and blotchy, and reticulated blooms mar the surface. Ordinary overall.”
Right arc stroke follows brush travel; central dark mass and oval blot hold walls but are blobby; left grey washes are bulky, cloudy shapes.
WEAKEST Lower-left grey wash slab, bulky and lobed
STRONGEST Right sweeping curved stroke rising to top
Five tonal steps; right arc and left washes show grain and streaking; dark interior modulation just over threshold; oval blot and central dark mass fairly flat.
WEAKEST Bottom-centre oval black blot, flat inside
STRONGEST Right arc with streaked greys and grain
Pale circular washes, grey arcs and later black strokes read as separate passes; at upper left overlaps blur into mottled cloud, order less clear.
WEAKEST Upper-left washes merge into cloudy overlaps
STRONGEST Dark central stroke over grey arc
Large arc from top right sweeps down through centre-bottom dark mass; central paper gap with drip column shaped; left half crowded and diffuse.
WEAKEST Busy upper-left quadrant crowded and undirected
STRONGEST Sweeping arc carrying eye from top right
Reticulated, blotchy bloom textures in upper-left and upper-right grey washes, visible in colour view beside principal masses; splatter otherwise lively and controlled.
WEAKEST Mottled reticulated wash patches upper left and right
STRONGEST Splatter and dry-brush edges on right arc
3 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 3 distinct places, 15 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: 3 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 12 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 20 edge segments, 55% crisp, 20% soft or bloomed, 25% 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.
5 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.