T_236
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
- 5.2
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2.2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1
- Ink cover
- 88%
- Dark share
- 46%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- tide line 3, water stain 5, other 7, mud 1, bloom 2, ring 1
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 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.
5 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: 0.067 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 4 of 5 qualities.
Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps. Where reads differ, they differ by one rung; close calls resolve down.
READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“A layered sheet with a strong sweeping black arc and translucent grey passes. It is let down by bulky slabs, a flat crescent core, a crowded left side and tide-ringed drips in the top-left wash.”
The lower black crescent follows the travel of the brush. The upper-right square dark block is slab-like and the grey left wedge is diffuse, so some bulk remains.
WEAKEST Upper-right black slab, bulky and squared
STRONGEST Lower curved black arc tapering into dry-brush tail
There are five tonal steps and modulation measures 0.067. The upper-right block and the grey bands show grain and streaks, but the black crescent's core reads mostly flat.
WEAKEST Lower black crescent interior nearly flat
STRONGEST Upper-right block with grain and mottled density
Several translucent grey arcs and wedges overlap and stay legible beneath the black crescent and the upper-right slab. The order of passes reads across the centre and right.
WEAKEST Pale top-left wash with drip spatter muddles the order
STRONGEST Translucent grey arcs under black crescent and slab
A strong curved movement runs from lower left to upper right against the cream void at top centre. With 88% coverage the left side is congested and the empty paper is small.
WEAKEST Crowded left half with diffuse grey wedge
STRONGEST Sweeping arc from lower left up to the right
In the colour view, ringed drip marks and tide-edged blotches sit in the pale wash at top left and top centre, next to the grey masses. There is also a stray dot and speckling.
WEAKEST Tide-ringed drips and blotches in top-left wash
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaks in lower crescent tail
6 distinct places, 3 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, 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: 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 16 edge segments, 38% crisp, 63% soft or bloomed, 0% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
5 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 5.2.
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.