T_259
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
- 38%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- bloom 4, ring 7, water stain 6, other 3
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: 0.058 (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
“Gestural bowl composition close to R2: a good grey arc and a shaped white centre, but the right black mass is bulky and flat, and ringed drop blooms mark the central grey arc.”
Grey bowl arc follows the brush's travel; left dark sweep holds. Right black mass is slab-like with blobby finger lobes at its lower left.
WEAKEST Bulky right dark mass with blunt, lobed lower edge
STRONGEST Sweeping grey arc with dry-brush striations, lower centre
Five tonal steps; modulation 0.058. Left mass and grey arc show banding and grain, but the right black core reads as uniform surface.
WEAKEST Core of right black mass flat inside
STRONGEST Left dark sweep with banded, stepped greys
Pale ring wash, grey arc and black passes can be read where they overlap at left; at right the black mostly covers the earlier grey.
WEAKEST Right mass where black covers the grey beneath
STRONGEST Pale arc under grey sweep under left dark
The bowl-shaped arc frames the open upper centre and carries the eye from left to right; the right cluster is dense and sits heavily.
WEAKEST Crowded, heavy right side
STRONGEST Shaped white bowl of empty paper, top centre
Circular pale drop blooms with rings sit in the central grey arc and at bottom left, visible in colour; a feathered cloudy wash edges the right mass.
WEAKEST Pale ringed drop blooms in the grey arc
STRONGEST Dry-brush grain in the grey arc 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, 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: 2 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 8 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 17 edge segments, 47% crisp, 41% soft or bloomed, 12% 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.
2 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.