T_252
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.04.21, day 114
- Size
- 70 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S3, Tanxi Jing Pi, 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
- 5.5
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2.6
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1
- Ink cover
- 79%
- Dark share
- 52%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- water stain 10, bloom 6, tide line 2, ring 2, other 1
Older engine
- V7
- 3
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: 0.064 (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
“Large layered arc stepping pale to black reads in clear sequence, but left slabs are blunt, the black mass is fairly flat, and top-left paper carries visible water stains.”
Large arc follows brush travel with dry-brush striations top right; left end stacks into bulky rectangular slabs with clumsy joins and ragged fingered bottom edges.
WEAKEST Blunt stacked slab at left end of the arc
STRONGEST Sweeping upper arc stroke with dry-brush streaks right
Five tonal steps grading pale left to black right; upper grey band has striation and pooled dots; lower-right black slab mostly uniform despite modest modulation.
WEAKEST Lower-right black mass largely flat inside
STRONGEST Grey upper band with striations and pooled reticulation
Several translucent passes overlap in clear sequence from pale left wash through mid greys to black, each edge legible; black slab partly just covers the grey.
WEAKEST Black lower slab covers earlier passes beneath it
STRONGEST Stepped translucent passes progressing pale to dark
Single arcing movement crosses the sheet with strong direction; mass dominates heavily, top-left paper is leftover and spotted, bottom edge crowded.
WEAKEST Stained leftover paper at top left
STRONGEST Rising arc carrying eye left to right
Round grey water spots and bloomed pale wash at top-left and left beside the pale mass; milky circular patch inside left grey mass; grey drop under black bottom right.
WEAKEST Round grey stains and blooms at top left
STRONGEST Pooled reticulation dots in upper grey band
5 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 5 distinct places, 21 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 14 edge segments, 43% crisp, 29% soft or bloomed, 29% 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.
6 major flaws: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.5.
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.