T_224
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
- 73%
- Dark share
- 14%
- Tonal steps
- 3
- Flaws named by the reads
- ring 9, other 4, water stain 3, bloom 5, tide line 1
Older engine
- V7
- 5
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: 0.054 (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 busy grey sheet with a working arc structure and a left fan with good bristle detail. The flat right blot, the cloudy centre, and the rings and drip pools near the left mass hold it at around the ordinary level.”
The left dark fan and the central arc hold as nameable forms. The right dark blot is bulky and the lower-right grey wedge is ragged and stiff.
WEAKEST Bottom-right ragged grey wedge with no clear shape
STRONGEST Large grey arc sweeping across the top centre
The left fan has bristle banding and stepped density. The right black blot is flat inside. Mid-greys dominate; measured modulation is 0.054 across three tonal plateaus.
WEAKEST Dark blot at upper right is dense, flat black
STRONGEST Left dark fan with streaked bands inside
Pale horizontal bands, the grey arc and the dark strokes read as separate passes. In the centre the greys fuse into a hazy mid-tone.
WEAKEST Central overlaps go cloudy and mid-grey
STRONGEST Left fan laid over pale horizontal bands
The arc carries the eye from the left mass to the right blot. Ink covers 73% of the sheet, so the empty paper is mostly a leftover margin, and the centre is crowded.
WEAKEST Crowded hazy grey centre
STRONGEST Arc linking the left fan to the right blot
Circular rings and pale drip pools sit beside the lower-left mass. The paper surface is creased and crackled through the grey arc, and spots and blotches are scattered across the sheet.
WEAKEST Ring marks and drip pools around the left mass
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaking in the left fan
8 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 8 distinct places, 22 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), 8 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 15 edge segments, 47% crisp, 53% soft or bloomed, 0% 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.