T_229
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.04.18, day 111
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S10, Red Star Mo She Imitation Antique Chu bark, Exhibition Edition
- 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
- 42%
- Tonal steps
- 6
- Flaws named by the reads
- bloom 1, water stain 3, other 3, tide line 2
Older engine
- V7
- 8
How the number was made
Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.8, on 2026.10.06: measured by code, then read 3 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: 0.085 (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 strong black crescent with legible grey arcs at right. The left mass is bulky and cloudy, with blooms that weaken the surface. The sheet is ordinary overall, close to R2.”
The black crescent from centre to right follows the travel of the stroke. The left mass is a blunt grey slab with ragged, cloudy edges.
WEAKEST Left grey block, bulky and slab-like with clumsy edges
STRONGEST Black crescent sweep following the brush's arc
The right greys show stepped density and arcs, and the left grey has mottled grain. The large black crescent is nearly uniform inside despite modulation of 0.085.
WEAKEST Black crescent interior mostly dense and flat
STRONGEST Right grey arcs with stepped translucent bands
Grey arcs sit legibly beneath the black at right. At left, the grey passes merge into a mottled mass and the order is harder to read.
WEAKEST Left mass where passes blur into cloudy grey
STRONGEST Right translucent grey arcs under the black crescent
The U-shaped sweep carries the eye from the left mass to the upper right and shapes the empty paper at upper centre. The bulky left block feels heavy and congested.
WEAKEST Left block crowded, static against the sweep
STRONGEST Crescent sweep shaping the open upper-centre paper
The left grey mass has a cloudy, blotchy interior with blooms against the black, visible in the colour view. The paper is tinted overall, and pale streaks run through the right greys.
WEAKEST Cloudy blotched wash in left grey mass
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaks at right arc edges
6 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 6 distinct places, 9 mentions in all across 3 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), 6 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 17 edge segments, 47% crisp, 24% 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.
2 major flaws: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
3 of 5 validV23 rating 5.0.
Engine v23.8, 3 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.