T_228
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
- 76%
- Dark share
- 19%
- Tonal steps
- 6
- Flaws named by the reads
- ring 6, water stain 6, tide line 6, bloom 2
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.
6 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: 0.061 (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
“This gestural sheet is close to R2. Grey passes stay legible and a diagonal sweep links the left fan to the right V. Scattered ringed water stains, a ragged left blot and a flat black core hold it at ordinary or below.”
Right dark V and top-right mass read as made strokes with travel; left dark patch is a ragged blob; the central diagonal sweep holds.
WEAKEST Left dark blot, ragged and lobed
STRONGEST Right V-shaped dark stroke with splayed edges
Six tonal steps; the grey washes show grain and banding at left and centre, but the black core at top right is dense and flat.
WEAKEST Top-right black core flat inside
STRONGEST Left grey fan with granulated banding
Several translucent grey passes overlap at left and right and stay readable; black passes sit on top, and the order blurs in the right cluster.
WEAKEST Right washes muddled under the dark V
STRONGEST Translucent grey planes overlapping at left
Two masses joined by a rising diagonal give direction; the top-centre and lower-centre paper is cluttered with drops and lacks shape.
WEAKEST Centre-bottom spatter field feels leftover
STRONGEST Diagonal sweep linking left fan to right V
Many pale ringed blots with tide edges scattered across centre and top-centre; a vertical drip trail at lower centre; milky cloudy wash at left.
WEAKEST Ringed droplet stains across the centre
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaks at right edge washes
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, 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: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 5 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 17 edge segments, 35% crisp, 35% soft or bloomed, 29% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
6 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.