T_256
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
- SHP: save, has potential (Peter's early system, since retired)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 5.2
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1.2
- Ink cover
- 75%
- Dark share
- 49%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- bloom 9, other 6, water stain 2
Older engine
- V7
- 4
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: 0.048 (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 gestural horizontal sheet: three black crescents over grey washes. The left and middle strokes are fluent, while the right mass is lumpy. Tone and layering are adequate, the composition is crowded in a band, and there is minor mottling. An ordinary sheet.”
Left crescent and rising stroke follow the brush's travel; middle stroke fluent. The right mass breaks into bulky lobes and drops at its base.
WEAKEST Right dark mass: lumpy lower end with blobby protrusions
STRONGEST Middle crescent stroke with dry-brush tail
Bristle striations model the left and middle strokes; five tonal steps; grey washes behind. The right black mass is mostly flat. Modulation 0.048 is barely above flat.
WEAKEST Right dark mass interior largely flat black
STRONGEST Left crescent with striated bristle banding
Pale grey sweeps, a mid-grey cloud, then black strokes. The overlaps mostly read, but the central grey cloud blurs the sequence.
WEAKEST Central grey cloud wash fuses passes, order unclear
STRONGEST Black crescents laid over translucent grey washes
Three crescents set up a left-to-right wave with a rising peak at the centre-left. The ink fills a dense horizontal band, and the empty top paper is barely shaped.
WEAKEST Top paper reads as leftover above a crowded band
STRONGEST Wave rhythm from left crescent to right rise
Dry-brush is used well in the strokes. There is speckled mottling in the grey below the middle stroke and at the lower left, cloudy grey at the top centre, and stray drops at the bottom right.
WEAKEST Mottled spotty grey wash below middle stroke
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaking in middle and left strokes
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, 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), 6 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 18 edge segments, 56% crisp, 44% 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.
3 major flaws: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.2A 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.