T_262
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.04.26, day 119
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S4, Tanxi half-raw, 6-foot
- 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
- 5.2
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1.2
- Ink cover
- 73%
- Dark share
- 62%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- water stain 8, ring 1, bloom 3, other 3, tide line 1
Older engine
- V7
- 7
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.
4 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: 0.059 (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 strong arc composition with a modelled left mass, held back by a stiff right block, a crowded lower right, and cloudy wash accidents around the centre-right wedge. An ordinary sheet, close to R2.”
Left arc curves fluently into a dark base; the right vertical block is a stiff rectangle; the centre-right wedge is coherent but bulky.
WEAKEST Right vertical block, slab-like rectangle
STRONGEST Left sweeping arc following brush travel
Left arc shows graded bands inside; the right block has streaks and grain, but its dark core is flatter. Four tonal steps, modulation 0.059.
WEAKEST Right block's lower dark interior fairly flat
STRONGEST Left arc graded from grey rim to black
Translucent grey passes under and over the dark masses stay readable, especially at the top right block. The spatter at lower right confuses the order.
WEAKEST Splattered lower right where the passes blur together
STRONGEST Grey veils over the dark right block
The U-shaped arc carries the eye from left to right and shapes the empty paper at top left; the lower right is crowded with spatter and wedges.
WEAKEST Crowded, busy lower-right quadrant
STRONGEST Large arc framing the open top-left paper
Milky, cloudy splashes and blotchy pale wash around the centre-right dark wedge, and a small ring-like blot at top left, are visible in the colour view.
WEAKEST Cloudy pale patches beside the centre-right wedge
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaks in the right block
6 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 6 distinct places, 16 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), 4 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 16 edge segments, 50% crisp, 25% soft or bloomed, 25% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
4 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
4 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.