T_264
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
- PT: probably trash (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
- 81%
- Dark share
- 62%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- water stain 7, ring 4, tide line 3, other 4, bloom 1
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.
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: 0.062 (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
“The two big arcs make a strong diagonal and have some layered translucency, but the forms are bulky in places, the top left is cluttered, and a visible water stain below the arcs lowers the material score.”
Broad arcing bands hold their walls and follow the sweep; left-edge block and top-left strokes are lumpy and stiff.
WEAKEST Bulky ragged block at left edge behind arc
STRONGEST Right dark arc segment following brush sweep
Right dark mass shows grain, cracks and inner arc; left band has stepped bands but broad interiors stay fairly uniform grey.
WEAKEST Big left grey band fairly even inside
STRONGEST Right dark arc with grain and inner dark ring
Two or three translucent passes overlap legibly in left arc and right sweep; top-centre crossing gets dense and less readable.
WEAKEST Top-centre overlaps merge into murky grey
STRONGEST Stepped translucent arcs in left band
Two arcs drive a strong diagonal movement and shape the lower-centre void; top-left is busy and cluttered with splatter.
WEAKEST Cluttered top-left corner with drips
STRONGEST Rising diagonal arc sweep across sheet
Visible pale tide-edged stain with drip trail below the arcs, and ringed droplets on left paper, visible in colour view.
WEAKEST Pale water stain and drip trail bottom centre
STRONGEST Grainy dry-brush edges on right arc
5 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 5 distinct places, 19 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), 5 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 16 edge segments, 44% crisp, 31% 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.
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.