T_237
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
- 86%
- Dark share
- 57%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- tide line 5, bloom 6, other 5, water stain 4
Older engine
- V7
- 7
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.
4 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: 0.049 (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 sweeping black arc over grey bands gives the sheet a working structure. The black interior is fairly flat, the left side is crowded and blotchy with tide-line blooms, and drips mar the bottom. Ordinary, near R2.”
The main black arc holds and curves with the brush, and the right descending band is coherent. The left slab and lower-left washes are bulky and blotchy.
WEAKEST Left grey slab and blotchy lower-left wash forms
STRONGEST Upper dark arc band following the brush's sweep
Modulation is 0.049, just above flat. The right band and upper-right greys show arcs and grain. The central black band is mostly even, with dry-brush streaks only at its lower edge.
WEAKEST Main black band interior is largely uniform
STRONGEST Right descending grey band with circular arcs and grain
Four tonal steps. The black arc sits legibly over a grey arc, and the right band crosses the earlier greys. On the left, the passes clump together and are harder to read.
WEAKEST Lower-left overlaps blur into cloudy wash
STRONGEST Black arc over grey arc, upper band order legible
The large arc gives clear movement, and the white lower-centre paper is shaped by the bands. Ink covers 86% of the sheet, which crowds it, and the left side is congested.
WEAKEST Crowded, murky left third
STRONGEST Sweeping arc carrying the eye from left to lower right
Hard tide-line blooms and cloudy patches in the upper-left and left greys sit against the principal masses and are visible in the colour view. A drip trail runs across the bottom centre.
WEAKEST Tide-lined blooms in the left wash masses
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaking at lower edge of black band
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), 6 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 16 edge segments, 25% crisp, 69% soft or bloomed, 6% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
4 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
7 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.