T_254
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
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1
- Ink cover
- 75%
- Dark share
- 41%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 10, tide line 4, water stain 4
Older engine
- V7
- 6
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: 0.071 (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 broad bowl arc with a heavy black slab at left. The forms and layering work at an ordinary level. The left black is flat inside, and a white hole and cloudy wash edges weaken the surface.”
Left black slab is a curved block with a bristle-trailed edge; the right arc follows the brush's travel; the centre grey wash is bulky and loosely bounded.
WEAKEST Bulky grey wash mass, centre-left, ragged and slab-like
STRONGEST Right arc sweep with dry-brush trailing strokes
Five tonal steps; modulation 0.071. The right arc and centre grey show graded texture, but the left black block reads mostly uniform inside.
WEAKEST Left black slab interior largely flat
STRONGEST Right arc greys with grain and wrinkle texture
Pale wash, mid-grey, and black passes stay distinct; the dark streaks at bottom right sit legibly over grey; the black slab mostly covers what lies beneath it.
WEAKEST Black slab covers earlier grey at left
STRONGEST Grey wash under dark stroke, bottom-centre arc
A large U-shaped arc carries the eye from the left block to the upper right and shapes the empty oval; the left side is heavy and blocky.
WEAKEST Heavy left block crowds left edge
STRONGEST Sweeping bowl arc enclosing open paper
A white void sits in the bottom-centre grey mass; wrinkled, cloudy wash and tide edges in the right arc; a drip blob at centre; a hair-line crack in the left black.
WEAKEST White paper hole/blot in bottom grey wash
STRONGEST Dry-brush bristle edges at lower left
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, 18 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), 2 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 15 edge segments, 33% crisp, 33% soft or bloomed, 33% 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.
3 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.