T_257
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
- 85%
- Dark share
- 55%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- water stain 5, other 6, bloom 3, tide line 1, ring 1, mud 1
Older engine
- V7
- 5
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: 0.072 (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
“An ordinary sheet. A good sweeping left arc and an S-flow sit against a bulky, flat black slab. The layering is legible but limited. A blotchy, bleached accident in the top right lowers material quality.”
Left arc follows the brush's travel and tapers cleanly. The lower-right black slab is a heavy rectangle with a blunt left end; only its right edge breaks into dry-brush.
WEAKEST Bulky black slab, lower right, blunt left end
STRONGEST Left sweeping curved stroke tapering to a point
The left arc and the upper grey band show banding and stepped greys. The black slab only has faint arcs in the stretched view and is largely flat inside.
WEAKEST Black slab interior is near-uniform
STRONGEST Banded greys within left curved stroke
Two or three passes: pale grey washes, mid-grey arcs and a black slab. Overlaps on the left are readable, but the black on the right mostly covers rather than builds.
WEAKEST Black slab covers the grey band beneath it
STRONGEST Translucent grey arcs overlapping on the left
A sweeping S-curve carries the eye left to right, and the empty top centre has a shape. The ink is dense across the bottom, and the top right is messy and weak.
WEAKEST Cluttered splash area, top right
STRONGEST S-movement from left arc into right band
Top right: a pale blotchy wash with a bleached white shape and stray drops beside the grey band. Left edge: a milky, mottled texture. Both are visible in colour.
WEAKEST Blotchy bleached patch and spatter, top right
STRONGEST Dry-brush tail at right end of slab
4 distinct places, 1 major.
Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 4 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), 3 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 15 edge segments, 33% crisp, 60% soft or bloomed, 7% 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 5.0.
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.