T_268
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
- 6.7
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2.2
- Layering
- 3
- Composition
- 2.2
- Material and surface
- 1.6
- Ink cover
- 79%
- Dark share
- 36%
- Tonal steps
- 5
- Flaws named by the reads
- water stain 7, other 9, ring 3
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.
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: 0.062 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 2 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 large layered arc with readable translucent passes and a well-modelled dark mass. The right mass is somewhat slab-like. There are small surface accidents: a pale drip and blot at top centre, and creases.”
Left and bottom arcs follow brush travel with dry-brush striations; the right dark mass is a squared, slab-like wedge with a blunt corner edge.
WEAKEST Right dark mass reads as a blunt wedge
STRONGEST Dry-brush left arc following the sweep
Dark interior modulation 0.062, five tonal steps; right mass shows streaking, drips and grain, and grey arcs are banded with graded overlaps.
WEAKEST Lower centre dark band fairly even
STRONGEST Right dark mass with streaks and grain
Several translucent arcs stack in readable order from pale outer to dark inner; overlaps build depth, though the right black partly covers earlier passes.
WEAKEST Dark mass covers some underlying grey passes
STRONGEST Overlapping translucent grey arcs at left-centre
A single large arc carries the eye left to right; the pale bowl above is shaped by the arcs. Bottom is heavy and cropped, right top slightly busy.
WEAKEST Busy dripped top edge of dark mass
STRONGEST Sweeping bowl arc framing the empty top
Ink controlled with good dry-brush; a pale stray drip trail and blot sits top centre, paper creases cross the greys, and a vertical crease line marks the dark mass.
WEAKEST Pale drip trail and blot at top centre
STRONGEST Dry-brush edges on left and right arcs
7 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 7 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), 1 enclosed void at true size in its grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 14 edge segments, 36% crisp, 50% soft or bloomed, 14% 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.
1 major flaw: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.6A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 6.7.
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.