T_265
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
- 5.3
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2.2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1.2
- Ink cover
- 79%
- Dark share
- 47%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- bloom 4, other 11, water stain 4
Older engine
- V7
- 6
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: 0.057 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 3 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 rotational composition of three dark fan segments with some tonal life in the top arc. The forms are bulky, the passes are mostly covering, and cloudy halos and blots sit around the masses. An ordinary sheet near R2.”
Three curved fan segments with walls that hold; the top arc follows the stroke well, but the bottom-left and right wedges are bulky and slab-like.
WEAKEST Bottom-left fan segment, blunt cut top edge
STRONGEST Top arc segment following the curved brush travel
Modulation is 0.057. The top arc shows streaks and stepped density, and the right wedge is mottled. The bottom-left mass is more uniform. Four tonal steps.
WEAKEST Bottom-left segment interior, fairly even grey
STRONGEST Top arc with banded, streaked density shifts
There are two passes: pale grey splashed washes under dark fan segments. The overlaps can be read at the edges, but the dark passes mostly cover the earlier ones.
WEAKEST Black segments largely cover the grey underlayers
STRONGEST Grey halo washes legible beneath the top arc
The three segments imply a circular rotation, and the central white is shaped. The lower right feels leftover and spotted, and the sheet is crowded at the top edge.
WEAKEST Lower-right empty quarter with scattered drips
STRONGEST Rotational swing of the three segments around the centre
Cloudy grey bloom washes cling to the top arc and the bottom-left segment. There are crease cracks across the top arc and stray blots at the lower right.
WEAKEST Cloudy splashed grey halos beside the dark masses
STRONGEST Dry-brush grain within the top arc
6 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 6 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: 2 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 2 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 18 edge segments, 39% crisp, 56% soft or bloomed, 6% 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.
2 major flaws: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.2A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.3.
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.