T_231
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
- PT: probably trash (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
- 90%
- Dark share
- 43%
- Tonal steps
- 3
- Flaws named by the reads
- bloom 5, water stain 3, other 6, tide line 3
Older engine
- V7
- 9
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
“A confident looping arc with a good open centre and dry-brush texture at the top. The black diagonal is blunt and flat, the lower wash is cloudy and blotched, and near-total coverage crowds the sheet.”
Looping arc holds as one coherent form and the upper sweep follows the brush, but the left dark diagonal is bulky and blunt, and the lower arc's edges are soft.
WEAKEST Slab-like dark diagonal at left with ragged base
STRONGEST Upper arc sweeping right with dry-brush travel
Upper arc shows banding and grain, and the right dark clump has stepped density. The left black diagonal is mostly uniform. Three tonal steps; modulation 0.053 is only modest.
WEAKEST Left dark diagonal mass largely flat inside
STRONGEST Upper arc banding and dry-brush streaks
Grey arc pass, black diagonal and dark right clump overlap legibly. Lower-arc passes merge into a mottled wash, and their order is hard to read.
WEAKEST Lower grey arc passes blur into cloudy wash
STRONGEST Black diagonal laid over grey arc, legible
Clear circular movement around the central void, but 90% coverage leaves little shaped paper. The left and top corners are cluttered with scrappy wash.
WEAKEST Crowded corners; ink covers nearly the whole sheet
STRONGEST Open eye-shaped void at centre of loop
The lower arc wash is milky and mottled, with round blotches and soft rings visible in colour. Scattered drips sit at top right. The overall warm tint looks like discolouration.
WEAKEST Cloudy, blotchy lower grey arc
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaks along upper arc
6 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 6 distinct places, 17 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), 7 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 13 edge segments, 23% crisp, 62% soft or bloomed, 15% 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.