T_223
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
- 84%
- Dark share
- 29%
- Tonal steps
- 3
- Flaws named by the reads
- ring 4, tide line 4, water stain 7, bloom 2, mud 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.
3 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
“Two opposed arcs over layered grey washes. The right arc has good dry-brush banding, but the centre is crowded and the left wedge is flat. Scattered water-drop rings and cloudy wash patches damage the surface. Ordinary overall.”
Both arcs read as made, curving strokes; the left upper dark wedge and the central grey slab are bulky fills that do not follow the brush.
WEAKEST Left dark wedge top centre, blunt filled triangle
STRONGEST Right arcing mass with brush-travel striations
The right arc shows arcs and grain inside. The left arc has some streaking, but the dark wedge at top centre is uniform. Modulation of 0.053 is only just above flat.
WEAKEST Left dark wedge interior is flat
STRONGEST Right arc's banded dry-brush striations
Pale grey washes, mid greys and black arcs overlap and stay readable on the left. The sequence is less clear across the centre and the right.
WEAKEST Centre grey slab sits flat over earlier washes
STRONGEST Left arc crossing the translucent grey wash
Two arcing masses face each other with a central opening and give some movement. Ink covers 84% of the sheet, so the paper is barely shaped and the centre is crowded.
WEAKEST Busy grey centre wedge between the two arcs
STRONGEST Opposed arcs framing the central gap
Pale tide-ringed droplets in the top centre and top right are visible in the colour view. There are also cloudy rings in the lower-left grey wash beside the left arc.
WEAKEST Pale drop rings scattered across the top centre
STRONGEST Dry-brush grain in the right arc
5 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 5 distinct places, 19 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: 2 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 4 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 15 edge segments, 20% crisp, 73% soft or bloomed, 7% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
3 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.